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UNIVERSITY ROUNDUP

Helpful gesture: Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M. Karunanidhi handing over a cheque for Rs.10 lakh to Dravidian University Vice-Chancellor G. Lakshminarayana for promoting translation of Tamil classics into other Dravidian languages.

A cheque for the amount was handed over by the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi to the Vice-Chancellor Gangisetti Lakshminarayana at a function in Chennai on Dec 7.

Dr. Karunanidhi assured to provide an annual grant of Rs.25 lakh for the comprehensive development of Tamil studies and also for providing scholarships to Tamil students in the varsity.

M. Rajendran, Director, Tamil Development, DU informed the Chief Minister about the recent developments pertaining to Tamil Studies at the university. G. Santhanam, secretary, Tamil Development and Culture, Govt. of Tamil Nadu and a member of the university’s Executive Council was also present on the occasion.

Sri Padmavathi Mahila Viswa Vidyalayam’s (SPMVV) Home Science department conducted a workshop on ‘Academic stress among adolescents’ last week to create awareness among the parents, administrators and teachers on the contentious issue, identify the key factors and also develop strategies to manage stress.

In his keynote address on ‘The architecture of academic stress’, P. V. Ramamurthy, Centre for Research on Ageing, SVU Department of Psychology, detailed the origin of academic stress showing causative model .

Vice-Chancellor Veena Noble Dass reviewed the prevailing situation in Indian households and discussed the aspirations of adolescents with regard to education.

D. Sarada, head of Home Science, presented her views on education linked with livelihood opportunities.

The abnormal aspirations of parents about their wards’ career were explained as the root cause for the stress-laden home environment.

P. K. Sivanandan, principal of IES Public School, Thrissur acted as a resource person and spoke on stress management. E. Manjuvani, a professor of Home Science and the event coordinator introduced the topic to the delegates.

Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha, Tirupati, brought out a self-learning compact disc ‘Samskurta Sikshika’ to facilitate easy learning of spoken Sanskrit.

The disc was released by the Vice-Chancellor Hare Krishna Satapathy.

The interactive disc contains melodious rendering of famous Sanskrit verses (Slokas) composed in different meters and bits of Sanskrit prose with picturisation, speeches of eminent scholars and different situational conversations with video clippings. It also contains stories with excellent animation and perfect conversational styles, simple learning method of Devanagari script.

Also, it has ‘Antyakshari’, a unique competition in reciting Sanskrit slokas.

By using this CD, the Sanskrit enthusiasts can not only learn perfect pronunciation, different styles of conversation, styles of speech, made-easy grammar, but can also enjoy stories with animation and graphics, quiz, fun with words and numbers etc., according to the project coordinator V. Muralidhara Sharma, who is a professor of Education at the Vidyapeetha.

Prof. Satapathy welcomed the Sanskrit enthusiasts, including professionals like doctors, engineers and managers, who missed an opportunity to learn Sanskrit during their childhood, to make use of the opportunity.

A.D. RANGARAJAN,

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