BHUBANESWAR: The presence of just seven faculty members in the Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT) has caught the attention of Niti Aayog. It has written to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik requesting the intervention of the state government to set things right in the premier technical university.
The matter had come to the fore during a consultation meeting conducted by Niti Aayog with the V-Cs of technical institutions of eastern India in October this year to understand the challenges and explore measures for improving research and development in the institutions.
Expressing concern about the faculty crisis, member NITI Aayog VK Saraswat recently wrote to the chief minister that BPUT boasts of a dedicated high-performance computing lab and many centres of excellence like artificial intelligence (AI) and aerospace. “However, the university faces a considerable challenge with a limited number of faculty members. It currently has only seven faculty members,” he said.
Saraswat stated that this shortage of academic staff is a critical issue that demands immediate attention to ensure the effective delivery of the UG, PG courses and to maintain the quality of education and research.
The university offers UG degrees in five departments - electrical engineering, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electronics engineering and computer science. Postgraduate courses are offered in 10 departments.
While the electrical engineering department has three regular faculty members, civil engineering has two and mechanical and computer science disciplines have one each. Electrical engineering faculty member teaches electronics engineering.
For the PG departments, BPUT’s current sanctioned faculty strength is 25. Each of the PG departments should have one professor, two associate professors and three assistant professors depending on the student strength. However, in the case of UG, the university does not yet have a sanctioned faculty strength.
“We have written to the state government for sanctioning UG faculty strength of 1:2:6 - one professor, two associate professors and six assistant professors. It is under examination,” said vice-chancellor (V-C) of the university Amiya Kumar Rath.
Sources said there are 200 students who are pursuing both UG and integrated dual degree courses from the university. Similarly, there are 180 seats for PG. The V-C informed that recruitment for PG departments of civil and mechanical engineering has been completed recently and the joining process is underway. Interviews for all the vacant positions in the other departments will be carried out next month. The recruitment process is likely to be over by January first week, he informed.