The National Council for Teacher Education, in its previous status since 1973, was an advisory body for the Central and State Governments on all matters pertaining to teacher education, with its Secretariat in the Department of Teacher Education of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). Despite its commendable work in the academic fields, it could not perform essential regulatory functions, to ensure maintenance of standards in teacher education and preventing proliferation of substandard teacher education institutions. The National Policy on Education (NPE), 1986 and the Programme of Action thereunder, envisaged a National Council for Teacher Education with statutory status and necessary resources as a first step for overhauling the system of teacher education. The National Council for Teacher Education as a statutory body came into existence in pursuance of the National Council for Teacher Education Act, 1993 (No. 73 of 1993) on the 17th August,1995.
OBJECTIVE
The main objective of the NCTE is to achieve planned and coordinated development of the teacher education system throughout the country, the regulation and proper maintenance of Norms and Standards in the teacher education system and for matters connected therewith. The mandate given to the NCTE is very broad and covers the whole gamut of teacher education programmes including research and training of persons for equipping them to teach at pre-primary, primary, secondary and senior secondary stages in schools, and non-formal education, part-time education, adult education and distance (correspondence) education courses.
ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE
NCTE has its headquarder at New Delhi and four Regional Committees at Banglore, Bhopal, Bhubaneshwar and Jaipur to look after its statutory responsibilities. In order to enable the NCTE to perform the assigned functions including planned and co-ordinated development and initiating innovations in teacher education, the NCTE in Delhi as well as its four Reginal Committees have administrative and academic wings to deal respectively with finance, establishment and legal matters and with research, policy planning, monitoring, curriculum, innovations, co-ordination, library and documentation, inservice programmes. The NCTE Headquarters is headed by the Chairperson, while each Regional Committee is headed by a Regional Director.
Adam Gross, design principal at the Baltimore architectural firm Ayers Saint Gross, discussed the design of Vedanta University with Tom Hall the Arts and Culture Contributor for Maryland Morning with Sheilah Kast and the host of Choral Arts Classics on January 25 2008.
… leading coaching institute and publishing house IMS has come up with a ‘Centre for Communication Studies’ (CCS) here, the first in the country.
The centre will basically act as a finishing school, offering a wide range of classroom programmes to students and corporate executives to develop soft skills, hone business acumen and corporate etiquette.
According to IMS, picking the city over others was a logical step towards developing a pool of industry-ready workforce in a State bursting at its seams.
"The aim was to help more and more students profit from the upcoming opportunities generated by the industrialisation drive with confidence. Hence the move," said CCS director Subrata Dey.
The programmes have been prepared by a pool of IIT and IIM graduates and take strength from the unique methodologies followed to groom students. For example, in the ‘speak e’ class, seeking to develop English communication ability, a learner is ‘immersed into a simulated real-life situation with fellow students and trainers where he/she is encouraged to communicate according to the situation’s requirement.’
Besides, the candidate is placed in a group where others have a similar level of language skills for proper coaching. The other set of programmes from CCS stable include ‘the triple module placement training workshop,’ ‘powerprep’ and ‘propahgroom.’
While the former prepares a student face group discussion and get their basics right through interventions like ‘progressive interaction and argumentation,’ the latter two have been designed keeping the corporate professionals in mind. Interestingly, Dey said, several B-schools in the city have come forward to adopt them, especially ‘powerprep’ in their course curriculum.
It aims to develop the overall communication and report writing skills of participants and make him a true professional in power point presentation.
At present, the students are a mix of job seekers, management students and freshly recruited employees of corporate houses. IIT and IIM alumni would be on faculty.
In 2005 our CM had proposed the central takeover/adoption of the Institute of Material Sciences (IMS) in Bhubaneswar (68/1, Laxmi Vihar, Bhubaneswar – 751005 ) to make it a National Institute for advanced materials and applications. In this, ex-IIT Khragpur director Prof. K. L. Chpora, a recent Padma shri award winner, was involved. But besides the following news report from 2005 nothing much has happened.
BHUBANESWAR: The golden jubilee celebration of BJB College could not have come at a better time. It has received the State Government’s nod to start as many as four self finance courses from the coming academic session.
The new courses would include a five year integrated MBA programme and a two year post graduate programme in journalism and mass communication.
The other two courses would be a five year integrated MSc programme in Bioinformatics and a five year integrated MSc programme in electronic and telecommunications. All the courses are high in demand in the present job market.
They would be offered in collaboration with Heritage Vision, an educational trust, said college principal B.N.Patnaik. While the MBA programme will have 60 seats, rest of the programmes would have 48 seats each.
Placement would be the last thing one should worry about as the institute has emerged as a sought-after hunting ground for multinationals looking for bright minds.
According to placement officer Prof Swetansu Sekhar Rath, Infosys, Vedanta, ICICI Prudential and energy and environment solution firm Phermax are next in line. They are slated to the visit the campus soon.
This is 96.0 RavenshawRadio’, would exhort a cheerful, invigorating voice gently nudging denizens out of their sleep – in a few months time.
The first campus radio of the State has begun to take shape at the Ravenshaw University and would go on air before the start of the next academic session.
Basically, a campus radio with community content, the FM service would have a coverage area from 7 to 10 km reaching out to the entire population of the Millennium City.
The radio station would be a fully student-run entity, under supervision of faculty members, broadcasting programmes not confined to education only but on diverse topics related to the community and Cuttack City. ‘It would be essentially an infotainment bouquet.
The students would be doing programmes on studies, campus news as well as other social issues, information on developments and happenings in the city, cultural events along with transmitting entertainment content like music. The students would conceptualise, produce the content and host, jockey, report and newsread,’ said Vice-Chancellor Devdas Chotray.
The FM Facility has already obtained the licences from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and the project installation would be executed by Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Limited (BECIL). Joint General Manager of BECIL J P Nathani and his team are visiting the university on Wednesday in this connection.
The premier college of Orissa would join a few select institutions of the country like Anna University of Chennai, University of Pune, Goa University, IGNOU, Jamia Millia University and Karnataka State Open University in having their own FM radio service. …
During my visit to Bhubaneswar, I met various people involved with NISER. Following is a quick update.
Apparently the cabinet approval of NISER had a condition that said "subject to finance ministry clearance." Apparently that clearance has not come yet and its delay is guessed to be due to the difference between the IISER and NISER budget amounts. Its expected any day. But that clearance has some role in NISER not being able to hire a director and hire regular faculty. On the other hand DAE has its plate full with the atomic energy agreement and negotiation between India and US, so perhaps it is not moving at the speed as it should. I think Orissa government and people of Orissa should push DAE on this.
The first batch just finished their first semester. I was given the impression that the professors are teaching very diligently, have made the syllabus quite tough and are driving the students quite hard.
The land has not yet been handed over to NISER by the Orissa government. I am told there is no big problem but it is just moving slow. The NISER folks are a bit unhappy at this tardy pace because they would like the full campus to be built as soon as possible. I hope the ad means that there has been some movement, since I met them.
Several new buildings have been made and are being made in IOP campus to accommodate NISER classes until its own campus is done. The construction of these buildings have been quite fast.
Currently, in the absence of a director of NISER, the director of IOP is in charge. The main persons helping him are Prof. Jnana Maharana, Prof. D. P. Mohapatra and Prof. P. C. Das. Prof. Das is in charge of the M.Sc integrated program. Prof. Mohapatra is making sure that the buildings are made in time, the labs are equipped in time, etc. so that the classes can go on in time.
Following are some of the temporary teachers who are teaching the stduents.
Biology: Prof Rabi Nayak of IISc Bangalore is on leave from Bangalore and is the leading person. He has a new laboratory for his research and teaching at IOP. Other names that were mentioned to me were Prof. Anita Roy , Prof. K. M. Das and Prof. Chaini. I am told Prof. Santosh Kar will be teaching for a month in 2008 and some faculty from Institute of Life Sciences, Bhubaneswar will also teach.
Chemistry: Prof. Anadi Das (retired, Utkal) is in charge and is helped by Prof. Chandrasekhar Panda (retired Berhampur U, Ph.D IIT Kanpur) and Prof. M. Mohanty
Physics: Prof. N. Barik (formerly from Utkal University), Prof. Ansari (retired from IOP), Prof. Minaketan Panda (formerly at NEHU) and Professor Pathak (from IOP)
Mathematics: Prof. Padhee (formerly from Berhampur University, PhD IIT Kanpur) and Prof. P. C. Das.
Vedanta University Master Plan –UNBUILT Orissa, India Ayers/Saint/Gross Contact: Adam Gross, FAIA, 410.347.8500
“The scope and scale of this proposed university master plan is impressive. The conceptual thought to develop this complex program has been handled well. The design process makes it comprehensible. The unusual integration in India of the arts and humanities with science and engineering has been carefully planned with the use of radial and grid systems. It is well thought out and not contrived.”
Govt of India has started several institutions modeled after IISC except that these Institute would also have an integrated MSc program. These Institutes go by the name Indian Institute of Science Education and Research.(IISER). The NISER is a similar Institution which is being funded by DAE rather than MHRD.In that sense it a sister institution of TIFR, Mumbai, and NCBS, Bangalore, etc.The sanctioned faculty strength in the first phase is 200 of which at least 50 will be for the School of Biology. I seek your help to locate suitable faculty in all branches of biology through your network. We wish to make the new Institution one of the best in India and in the world. DAE is good organization so far financial support is concerned. Please contact Dr R. Nayak at rnayak@iopb.res.in for further information.
Unlike IRMA, which offers a two-year Post Graduate diploma in Rural Management, KSRM will be able to award an MBA in Rural Management to the first batch of 72 students passing out in 2009 owing to its deemed university status.
The institute has also received the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) approval for increasing the number of students from 74 to 100-120 for the second batch of students in 2008.
LK Vaswani, who taught at IRMA for 16 years and is now the director of KSRM, says the new institute retains the IRMA model of building and sustaining a partnership between rural people and committed professional managers.
But according to Vaswani, a key element that separates IRMA from KRSM, is the lack of inhibition towards its students choosing to work with the private sector.
…
“KSRM has decided to avoid taking a sectoral association. We do not believe in having any inhibitions towards the corporate sector considering more and more of them are entering the development sector. In fact, we are associated with the private sector where our students can have hands-on experience in agri-business, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), NGO management, finance and the like,†says Vaswani.
He added that in terms of on-the-field education or experiential learning, the institute hopes to surpass all other rural management schools.
For starters, the institute will hold live field training modules for a duration of 12 weeks which will be conducted thrice a year. The first batch of 72 students from 16 states will be asked to go back to their own states and adopt a village where they will work at the grassroot level. Students will also work with KIIT’s tribal school which has 3,000 children studying in its campus.
While IRMA, the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and other top B-schools face a shortage of faculty, KSRM officials say it does not worry them.
Along with seven core rural management faculty members, three of whom are from IRMA, Vaswani says faculty from the KIIT university’s other institutes like school of law, school of management, school of technology, school of social sciences etc. contribute to almost 50 per cent of the teaching load, making it a very healthy student-faculty ratio. Around 15 rural management faculty will be inducted in 2008.
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The institute has proposed an academic collaboration with the Department of Science and Technology (DST) to ensure the participation of its students in the government’s ‘Science for Society’ programme in partnership with over 40 NGOs.
Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik will lay the foundation stone of the National University of Law by the end of December. Sources said though the exact official date has not been finalised, the foundation stone laying ceremony is expected to be held on December 30.
The founding stone for the university will be laid on Brajabiharipur Mouza near CDA. The Government will provide one-time contribution of Rs 5 crore for the project. The Government will also provide 30 acre land for the project. The Law University will be built on the line of its counterpart in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Kolkata.
While the Chief Justice of Orissa High Court will be the Chancellor of the University, Chief Justice of Supreme Court will be the visiting chairman of the newly formed Governing board.
Note: As per a recent Economic Times article, currently there are 7 National Law Universities. They are in Bangalore, Bhopal, Raipur, Hyderabad, Jodhpur, Gandhinagar and Kolkata. There is plan that in 2008 they will have a common entrance exam. The proposed National Law University in Orissa should immediately attempt to join this group.
