The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Aim of new initiative is to make students "more employable"

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Dec 24, 2006
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Aim of new initiative is to make students "more employable"

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: Anna University and IBM initiative (where the latter is providing a package of its software to the university free of cost) is part of "our mission to make our students more employable," Vice Chancellor D. Viswanathan said on Friday.

Addressing a function to sign an MoU to formalise the initiative at the university, Dr. Viswanathan highlighted the need to update curricula, train faculty, improve infrastructure and pedagogy, if the State was to retain its advantage in information technology and the IT enabled service industry.

Through the MoU, IBM would provide most of its middleware to all the affiliated colleges at zero cost, faculty development programmes in middleware at selected locations by the university, training and certification at a discounted rate. As the products might be used in the curriculum, the university's board of studies and academic council would work out methods to implement the initiative, he said.

IBM Company officials, led by R. Dhamodaran (and not Ravi Damodaran as published on December 23), Director, Software Group, IBM India, said the entire set of software tools to the university and the college would normally cost US $ 150 million. This package would now be made available free of cost.

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