Mumbai, 29 June 2021: IIT Bombay has announced a launch of new undergraduate program – Liberal Arts, Sciences, and Engineering (LASE).
The Liberal Arts, Sciences, and Engineering (LASE) Program will provide selected undergraduate students at IIT Bombay with a unique choice at the end of their first academic year: apply for the LASE program. This program will have its first intake in the Autumn semester of 2022 from the batch admitted in Autumn 2021.
The “liberal arts” are often confused with the humanities but a liberal format is essentially a way of delivering a curriculum. The combination of broad foundations and so many choices makes the LASE program in STEM areas a “liberal arts” style offering that is a first in India.
The selected students will tentatively have a choice of five “Concentrations” leading to a B.S. degree in one of the following:
- Engineering Sciences
- Natural Sciences
- Social Sciences
- Art & Design
- Design your own custom concentration!
LASE students will take a set of “Foundation” courses in their second year. These courses focus on areas such as modern South Asian History, the History of Science, contemporary Digital Societies, current Social Structures, Reading & Writing Literature, apart from STEM subjects. The motivation behind such courses and the program as a whole is to enable the cultivation of diverse all-round proficiencies for those who want to explore different fields, venture out in new directions or pursue untrammeled and untraveled paths.
LASE students will have up to the end of their second year to finalize possible Concentrations with the help of their academic advisers. Students will take some prerequisite courses but otherwise have a large pool of special and open electives to choose from. LASE students will have the freedom to specialize in cutting-edge interdisciplinary fields in this program: AI and EdTech or Healthcare Engineering (within Engineering Sciences) or Biology (within Natural Sciences) are possible examples. All students will also complete a final year project.
Subhasis Chaudhuri, Director of IIT Bombay, said “In a world full of complex, interdisciplinary problems from climate change to AI to global pandemics, a combination of broad foundations and technical depth is urgently required. A look at the best institutions globally shows that such a combination is highly effective for innovation and leadership across disciplines. It was time we had such a program of our own, and now we will have it.”
