1. Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar Curriculum Development Workshop July 18, 2009 Sudhir K. Jain

2. IIT Gandhinagar:: A Great Opportunity • To create a world-class institute • To do things that existing IITs find difficult to implement • Paradigm shift from teaching schools to teaching-research schools • New disciplines and new focus, e.g., bioengineering, financial engineering,… • More relevance to society • Higher accountability of faculty and administration • Institutional management by professionals (less faculty-centric) • Competition with new and old IITs is an opportunity !

3. Challenges • Faculty and staff recruitment • Huge shortages • Intense competition with others • Quality post-graduate students • Lack of funding sources (initially) from research, consulting, donations, etc • Institution building (rather than research) may take a lot of faculty time (initially) • Be seen as poor cousins of the old IITs, in the process denying bona-fide opportunities

4. Agenda on Undergraduate Students (1/2) • Focus on de-stressing, life skills and curricula • Focus on all-round development, communication and life skills • IITGN students should be known for their life skills • Curricula to be more broad based • To prepare them for their last job, rather than for their first job • Students must know something about everything, and everything about something

5. Agenda on Undergraduate Students (2/2) • Focus on de-stressing, life skills and curricula (cont…) • Culture for undergraduate research • Teaching to be more interactive, where students learn to learn • Exchange programmes with other universities (both within and outside India) • Exposure to real world through high-quality industrial training • Need to inculcate social responsibility

6. Agenda on Postgraduate Students • Focus on recruitment of high quality students • Close relationships with other colleges (which are feeders to IITs) • Publicity and communication • PG programmes for working professionals • Must add considerable flexibilities • Facilitation, encouragement and incentives for quality research • Comparable with the best in the world • Better than any other university in India

7. Thoughts on UG Curriculum (1/2) • Must be broad, rather than narrow; e.g., • ME and ChE can learn same Thermodynamics • Must be rigorous • Solid Mechanics is to have same rigor for EE as for ME • A few things must be sacrosanct • Academic calendar

8. Thoughts on UG Curriculum (2/2) • Must be taught by the best persons available, regardless of the Department • Must allow different options to students and teachers • Different types of degrees (BTech, BTech Hons, Minors etc) • Different format of teaching (pass-fail option; 1 credit courses) • Different types of teachers (industry personnel to teach small courses)