The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : NAAC to study gender sensitivity in colleges

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Apr 15, 2004

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

NAAC to study gender sensitivity in colleges

THE NATIONAL Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) has identified seven major areas to assess educational institutions on gender sensitivity. Here is a list of the indicators, which can give a picture of how colleges fare on this crucial area.

Under the head "Curricular Aspects," NAAC proposes to identify women-related courses/topics introduced in the curriculum in various subjects taught. Under "teaching, learning, and evaluation," the council looks at gender-segregated data on students and faculty in various departments at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, besides participation of women faculty in seminars, conferences, workshops, faculty development programmes, and representation in various committees.

NAAC will look at the percentage of women faculty actively involved in research, guiding research students, operating projects, and publishing and extension activities. The indicators ask for specific research topics and extension activities related to women.

Infrastructure and learning resources are the other areas under the NAAC focus. Here, the colleges are required to furnish details on the availability of hostel, common room, toilet, and sports facilities for women and the availability of books and journals in the library. Sex disaggregated data on the number of women students getting scholarships/financial support and the students getting placement are among the NAAC indicators.

Here, the availability of women counsellors, sexual harassment cells, and woman doctors, in different colleges is considered.

Under the head "organisation and management," the indicators look into the number of women in all selection/promotion committees and the academic, administrative bodies of the institution besides details on maternity leave and crèche for children. Under the section "healthy practices," NAAC considers the number of gender sensitisation programmes conducted by the college, the number of women-related themes and topics taken up for discussion and debates and the number of leadership camps organised for the personality development of women students.

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THE BANGALORE University Department of Environmental Science recently organised a seminar on "Remote-sensing and its applications in environmental management." The head of the department, R.K. Somashekar, said that environmental management had moved from its earlier compartmental context to the modern ecosystem approach.

Recognising the advances made in frontier tools such as remote sensing and GIS, he said the coming together of remote sensing and GIS specialists and environmental resource managers augured well for the nation's future. The Vice-Chancellor, M.S. Thimmappa, highlighted the exploitation of natural resources leading to serious environmental degradation.

He brought out the conflicting development patterns as propagated by the western models in comparison with the eastern world, where there was total reverence to life.

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THE YELAHANKA-BASED Nitte Institute of Technology has organised "Anaadyanta-2004," an intercollegiate cultural festival on April 16 and 17. Among the events lined up for the festival are competitions in Indian light music, fashion show, mad ads, quiz, painting, JAM, English debate, rangoli, English essay, gaming, group dance, rock show by Moksha, collage, anthakshari, face painting and treasure hunt.

Rasheed Kappan

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