By Shalini S. Sharma
That several of Indian academics are visiting faculty at institutes all over the world is something which is known. Academic systems which provide a more open and innovative environment, to both students and faculty, than what is available in India are a natural draw for them.
While appreciating the merits of those systems Indians often forget that our own institutions, because of our high-quality students, provide an equally invigorating and exciting opportunity for those teaching abroad to come and spend time in our universities. In fact, India tops as a destination of choice for many foreign faculty who keep looking for opportunities to come and spend time with our students. What they most often lack is resources to fund their travel and to compensate them for their absence from host institutes.
This is exactly what the Ministry of Human Resource Development’s Global Initiative of Academic Networks (GIAN) seeks to address. The programme, launched three years ago, has successfully facilitated international exposure for scores of Indian students.
Under this programme, Centrally-funded institutions are encouraged to collaborate with international faculty and invite them to take courses in India. The course topic is mutually decided and both host institute and foreign faculty jointly apply to the Indian nodal agency for approval to start the course. Approval is required because funds for travel and other expenses of the visiting faculty come from the Government through various existing schemes such as Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (Teqip), schemes of UGC, AICTE, Department of Science &Technology etc.
A lump-sum amount of up to US$ 8000 for 12 to 14 hours of contact and up to US$ 12000 for 20 to 28 hours of contact is paid to the foreign faculty covering their travel and honorarium. Local hospitality is arranged by the host institution and the duration (number of weeks/days) is mutually decided by the host institution and the visiting faculty.
The 10-fold objectives of GIAN are:- To increase the footfall of reputed international faculty in Indian institutions; Provide opportunity to Indian faculty to learn and share knowledge and teaching skills in cutting edge areas; To provide opportunity to Indian students to seek knowledge and experience from reputed international faculty; To create avenue for possible collaborative research with international faculty; To increase participation and presence of international students in Indian academic institutions; Provide opportunity for students of different institutes / universities to interact and learn subjects in niche areas through collaborative learning process; Provide opportunity for technical persons from Indian Industry to update their knowledge in relevant areas; Motivate best international experts in the world to work on problems related to India; Develop high quality course material in niche areas, both through video and print that can be used by a larger body of students and teachers and to document and develop new pedagogic methods in emerging topics of national and international interest.
More than 650 courses have so far been completed under GIAN. Visiting faculty has been coming from all over the world, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, the UK and the US. Especially for persons of Indian origin, this is a great mechanism to give something back to their country – specially their knowledge.
IIT Kharagpur, being the nodal centre for GIAN, has been very active on this front and has completed 47 courses so far. These include several non-engineering courses as well such as ‘Planning and Management of Cultural Heritage Sites’, ‘Reducing Disaster Risks in Historic Urban Areas’ and ‘Media and Intercultural Communication’. IIT Kanpur has completed 99 courses and these include off-beat courses such as ‘China Wired: Culture & Politics of New Media in China’ which was taught by Dr. James Leibold, La Trobe University, Australia; ‘Creating solutions in minutes for people with disabilities.’
(The writer is a freelance journalist)
Comments are closed.