Bhubaneswar: Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar has been honoured with the University of the Year award in the category of universities in existence for 11-30 years, at the recently concluded FICCI Higher Education Excellence Awards 2021 ceremony. There were in total 11 categories of awards in this 7th edition of the event and the awards were announced today in the 16th FICCI Higher Education Summit 2021. The jury comprises of an eminent panel of experts chaired by Prof R A Mashelkar.
Speaking on the occasion, Professor R V Raja Kumar, Director said, “IIT Bhubaneswar has been trying to offer holistic education to its students, in standards at par with the cream of global class Institutions by bringing in academic excellence through several unique pedagogical and operational reforms. The sudden onset of the pandemic posed us a lot of challenges in fulfilling the self-imposed commitment and the Institute had to bring in right innovative processes required for offering education which is not compromised or affected by the pandemic. Some of the distinguished and unique innovative initiatives, the Institute could bring in, in this endeavour include,
- Coming out with a method for conducting pen and paper comprehensive examinations by online with online invigilation by faculty members (for which there is no commercial product available) for evaluating the student learning and applying the same successfully right from the beginning of the lockdown, including conducting end semester exams online for the last academic year.
- Switching to online education with zero gap at the onset of lockdown.
- Holding of combination of partial lab practice online and the rest with the physical presence of the students,
- Protecting the whole campus including the students who stayed back on the campus, faculty, staff and their respective families and 2000 construction workers, during the lockdown as well as thereafter, keeping the campus completely COVID free except for 5 cases during September 2020.
- Coming out with a unique and innovative method of holding a real convocation with online and physical participation of students, applying the same to hold the 9th convocation of the institute, by the side of many other initiatives including technology development Covid-19 control.
The entire Institute including the faculty, staff and the students participated in all these endeavours upon my own calls and the Institute could very successfully implement all of these, apply in practice and has been successful in all the initiatives. Many faculty members, staff and students have worked hard as a team in very successfully realizing these initiatives and all deserve to be complemented.”
He added that for the institute, receiving the honour in the 13th year of its existence, in the category of the Universities in existence for 11 to 30 years, is special, and it certainly encourages all at IIT Bhubaneswar and it will help the Institute to march towards fulfilling its dream vision, as soon as possible. The director acknowledged the support and encouragement of the Ministry of Education and thanked the jury members and FICCI for the honour and recognition.
The director himself provided the conceptual framework and the guidance and a number of institute functionaries including Dr Bharatram Ramkumar (Chairman CITSC), Dr Pravas Ranjan Sahu, (Dean Academics), Prof V R Pedireddi (Dean Student Affairs), Dr Srinivas Karanki, Dr Rajan Jha and Mr. Chandra, besides several others worked closely for implementing and successfully applying the systems and processes, at the institute.
