Ignorant attitude hurting Sambalpur
Following is an excerpt from a report in Times of India.
… the debate over Pujari’s brainchild SU Institute of Information Technology (SUIIT) has divided faculty in the varsity and educationists in the region.
While a section of them term the less than two-year old institute as the biggest success story for the varsity, others dismiss it as the culprit ruining traditional departments.
…Sadhu Charan Panda, former VC of Utkal University of Culture and a former faculty member of SU said SUIIT is the best thing that has happened to the university and to Sambalpur region to be relevant with the changing time and technology. "In less than two years of its existence, it has already attracted state-wide attention," he said.
Panda cautioned that an institutional mechanism should be put in place so that SUIIT continues to excel.
Established in 2010 as an autonomous constituent of SU, the institute imparting MCA, BTech, MTech and MSc in computer science, MSc (electronics) and MSc (bioinformatics) has proved to be a sought after institute in the region. Students from the institutes have got lucrative paid summer internships while several software companies have shown interest to come for campus recruitments, sources said. "Such a thing was an unheard of possibility for the varsity a year ago," pointed out a varsity teacher.
While the state government had given an initial budget of Rs 10 crore in 2009-10 for the institute, Rs 5 crore from Directorate of Distance and Continuing Education (DDCE) was given to it for construction of its buildings inside the varsity.
Not all are convinced with the "rare success story" eulogy for SUIIT. "Most of the courses being offered by the SUIIT were pulled out from different existing departments. It was not a new thing," said Prof B K Tripathy, senior-most professor in the university.
Electronics was taken out of physics department, computer science from mathematics while bioinformatics was pulled out from life sciences department.
These courses were already offered by the varsity, Prof Tripathy said, adding whether the consolidation has done wonders will be known after the first batch comes out of SUIIT next year.
With the varsity administration concentrating solely on SUIIT, other departments were suffering, said a teacher, adding "the varsity is getting reduced to an engineering college." Some teachers and the students’ union have questioned the logic of starting B Tech in SU.
"Most engineering colleges are not getting students for B Tech and are on the verge of closure. The VSS University of Technology, three km away from SU, is offering such a course. There was no need to start it here," reasoned Karunakar Supkar, chancellor’s nominee in the Syndicate.
The students’ union has objected to undergraduate courses being offered in the varsity where all other courses are at the post-graduate level. "The varsity was exclusively for PG students. Starting an undergraduate course was diluting its character, which is unacceptable," said student union general secretary Asis Chand.
The people with the view in blue should checkout the top universities in the world and whether they have undergraduate programs or not.
In regards to the view in yellow, Prof. Karunakar Supkar should check the statistics of what percentage of students in VSSUT are from the Sambalpur area and what percentage of students in SUIIT are from the Sambalpur area. My guess is that there are very few Sambalpur area students in VSSUT while a much larger percentage of the students in SUIIT will be from the Sambalpur area.
In previous articles we have highlighted many of the achievements of Prof. Arun Pujari. If he is not allowed a second 3 year tenure at Sambalpur University, that would be a big loss for Sambalpur University and Sambalpur.
8 comments October 19th, 2011