The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : "American youth keen to learn about Indian culture"

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Oct 01, 2006
ePaper

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

"American youth keen to learn about Indian culture"

Staff Reporter

Academics from US varsity sign MoU with SRM University

TAMBARAM: A team of academics from University of Wisconsin in United States of America and its constituent colleges said youth in their country were much interested in learning about and studying various aspects of Indian culture and heritage.

Don Betz, Chancellor of the American university at River Falls, said India's vast social and cultural aspects offered plenty of scope for youth in their country to study about. He was talking to reporters during a signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with S.R.M. University in Kattankulathur. The understanding would be on exchange of students and faculty and joint research in various fields.

Dr. Betz said the areas where they could work together were vast and were yet to decide on specific programmes. The facilities at the university in Kattankulathur were on par with those in leading institutions in the USA, he said.

He said they were also impressed with the plans the university had to improve these facilities.

The Chancellor was accompanied by Deans of the various colleges that came under the American university that educated 1.4 lakh students annually.

Terry Brown, Dean College of Arts and Science, said American students were amazed at the vast diversity of culture and heritage of India and they were keen to pursue Indian culture seriously. She said there was a growing opinion that American students should be educated about cultures and people all across the globe so that they had a broad perspective of the world. Only then would their education be purposeful and their careers successful.

M. Ponnavaiko, Director of Research and Virtual Education of the SRM University, said students would be selected for the exchange programme based on their merit and skills. The period of the MoU would be for two years.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu