IIT Bombay to Diversify Courses and Draw Female Students
A new Director has been appointed for IIT Bombay and he set some priorities upon attaining the position. IIT Bombay will make its courses diverse and it will draw a larger number of women students to maintain the gender ratio.
The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT Bombay), has a standing committee which is exploring the possibility of being able to adopt the “liberal education” system. A liberal education system is basically a multidisciplinary approach that is focused on bringing diversity to all programmes. IIT Bombay wants to apply this approach to STEM (which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) courses in order to draw more female students.
This announcement was made by the newly appointed Director of IIT Bombay, Subhasis Chaudhari. He succeeds Devang Khakhar who has served as the Director of the institute for two terms consecutively. Chaudhari has spent the last 29 years in the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Bombay as a professor and a researcher in artificial intelligence
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Subhasis Chaudhari said that while gender ratio continues to be a concern, the staff at IIT Bombay are trying to deal with in through innovative ideas. He cited that the standing committee has decided to provide postdoctoral fellowships to women scientists and they are also exploring ways to provide a liberal education in STEM courses.
The Director said that it gets easy for people if they have someone they can identify with in their younger years, which is why the institute has two female deans apart from several professors Heads of Departments.
One of the priorities of IIT Bombay is to train entrepreneurs in such a way that they become job givers and not merely job seekers, told Chaudhari. For this, they have set up research laboratories and liaison with several corporates, collaborating with them in any capacity so that both sides can benefit from it.
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The Director further said that IIT Bombay strives to place its students at the top of the value chain so that they are capable of providing leadership to most initiatives. It is important for them to stay ahead of their competitors in research and productivity. IIT Bombay has vastly invested to provide the best resources to students as they are the ultimate beneficiaries.