Newly appointed director of the Indian Institute of Technology-Guwahati (IIT-G), Prof T G Sitharam has planned to plant a dream to the students of the northeastern states by bringing them to premiere institution in Guwahati for 20 days.
Also read: Assam: IIT-Guwahati hosts festival of Design Technology and Art
Prof Sitharam who had taken over the charge as director of the IIT-G, said that he is planning to bring at least 120 students from different government run schools of the states in the Northeast to the IIT-G for an exposure visit so that they can have a dream of becoming an engineer.
“I am planning to bring 10 students’ those studying in class 10+2 from 12 schools every year for a 20-day stay here in our campus.”
“They will visit the infrastructure, the research facilities and will interact with the faculties here during their stay which will be completely free,” he added.
“I believe this will help them have a dream of becoming engineers,” said Prof Sitharam while interacting with the media on Friday.
He also said that the IIT-G already has established itself as a brand and that it has world class infrastructure to carry out advanced research and equipped with state of the art scientific and engineering facilities.
He further added that he would also focus on to spread the wings of IIT-G to serve north-eastern region with extension programmes reaching nooks and corners of the region to benefit the local people.
“The extension programme is an idea we are planning so that we can expand the reach among the people of the region. It, however, requires permission from the highest level. But we are going to work for it,” he said.
Sitharam identified lack of international students and faculties as one of the main drawbacks of the institutions and said that the problem will be addressed through masters and Ph D programmes to attract large number of students from the BIMSTEC and SAARC countries in near future.
He said that there is also a need to explore possibilities of joint Ph D programmes with different older IITs matching faculty interests utilizing the national facilities available in different IITs.
Prof Sitharam said that he will also lay stress on teaching self control and discipline to the students as well as the faculties by having regular yoga and meditation in the campus of the IIT-G.