The Hindu : National : Three varsities join hands

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Apr 28, 2005

National

National

Three varsities join hands

Lakshmi B. Ghosh

After 150 years in Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai

NEW DELHI: For nearly 150 years now, they have been pillars of academic excellence. And this Wednesday saw the country's first three universities — based in Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai — come together for a journey that promises to set new standards in higher education.

Celebrating the common heritage, they signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on Thursday in the presence of the President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, to work together on academic and other initiatives.

From setting up tele-education and high-speed data link facilities for online library networking and resource-sharing to joint degree and joint Ph.D programmes, the MoU envisages the setting up of chairs of the three universities mutually for Bengali, Tamil and Marathi for academic and cultural linkages.

Founded in 1857, the universities will celebrate their 150th year as a national event. They hope to instil vibrancy in higher education by working together. The MoU was signed by the respective Vice-Chancellors, Asis Kumar Banerjee (from Kolkata), S. P. Thyagarajan (Chennai) and Vijay Khole (Mumbai), at Rashtrapati Bhavan. Under the MoU, they will share their strengths and resources by acting as partners in the National Research Project on Nanosciences and Nanotechnology. Also planned are short-term faculty exchange programmes in identified areas of collaboration and the setting up of mutual distance education centres. The setting up of 150 inter-university students' fellowships for postgraduate studies and research programmes with 50 scholarships each to be awarded for the 150th year celebration have been announced.

Plans are afoot to organise inter-university sports events and performing arts and cultural festivals by utilising the slots available with the Association of Indian Universities for 2006-2007.

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