student life – The KGP Chronicle

More Towards Global Living Experience

Hon’ble Education Minister Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ Inaugurates International Faculty Visitors’ Accommodation at IIT Kharagpur

“I am sure IIT Kharagpur will take the Indian education standards to a new unparalleled level:” Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank, Hon’ble Education Minister

In an initiative towards attracting more faculty from prestigious foreign universities, the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur has constructed new International Faculty Visitors’ Accommodation. The Institute is looking forward to hosting nearly 100 international faculty members for short-term and long-term teaching besides for Research and Development.

A video of the new facilities that were inaugurated can be downloaded from the following link – https://fromsmash.com/IIT-Kharagpur-Fuction-Video

Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank,’ Hon’ble Minister of Education, Government of India, inaugurated the new International Visitors’ Accommodation at a virtual event on Thursday (15th October 2020) in the presence of Shri Sanjay Dhotre, Hon’ble Minister of State for Education, Government of India, Prof. V.K. Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur, and other faculty and staff from the Institute. Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ also laid the foundation stones for two new halls of residence for students during the occasion.

Addressing the inauguration function, Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank,’ Hon’ble Minister of Education, Government of India, said, “I would like to ask the students to progress keeping a strong vision and make it their mission to achieve their goals. We are prominently becoming a global education hub and the National Education Policy 2020 is making sure the academicians will study in India and stay in India. Soon, India will teach the world; and the world will come to India to learn.”

Further, Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ said, “With the strong foundation pillars of Quality, Quantity and Access, National Education Policy 2020 is inclusive and will help education reach international standards. I am sure IIT Kharagpur will take the Indian education standards to a new unparalleled level. On this occasion, I congratulate Prof. V.K. Tewari, Director, and his team at IIT Kharagpur and Shri Sanjay Dhotre. Naming the new infrastructure facilities after Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Shri. Atal Bihar Vajpayee, Bharat Ratna awardees and the legendary Smt. Savitri Phule will inspire students for sure to become leaders.” He laid particular emphasis on the importance of physical infrastructure to achieve our goals of excellence in the global scenario.

The A.P.J. Abdul Kalam International Visitors Residential Complex features fully-furnished studio apartments with modern amenities intended for full-time and part-time international faculty. Apart from 12 regular international faculty, the Institute also hosts international faculty from other foreign universities during the year for short-term courses under Global Initiative of Academic Networks (GIAN), Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC) and other programs of the Ministry of Education and Government of India. The Institute also hosts faculty for long-term programs as well. Close to 50 such faculty visited in 2019-2020.

Speaking earlier, Shri Sanjay Dhotre, Hon’ble Minister of State for Education, Government of India, said, “I congratulate IIT Kharagpur on unveiling the news infrastructure facilities. The Institute houses many world-class facilities and I am sure the Institute will be creating a new cutting-edge road map through the National Supercomputing Mission. I am happy about the unveiling of these new residence facilities. Naming the hostels on these eminent personalities will surely inspire the students.” He further emphasized the need for excelling in domain-specific studies and expressed his confidence that every IIT would select a few domains where they can become global leaders.

Foreign Faculty bring in many advantages and unique benefits to the Institute. Some of the key benefits for IIT Kharagpur Faculty and students include:

Multi-institutional Academic and Research exposure
Cross-cultural experience and increase in diversity
International faculty drive the global consciousness at educational institutions. They not only contribute to academia but bring internationalization to the industry by means of developing Intellectual Property
International faculty spearhead the overall globalization of institutes by attracting more international students, collaborations and branding, besides leading the institutes further towards excellence.

Speaking on this occasion, Prof. V.K. Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur, said, “I am happy to announce today (15th October 2020) the unveiling of three new infrastructure facilities at IIT Kharagpur. The Institute already has 23 halls of residence named after luminaries. Along with this, we are naming the new boys’ residence of the hall after Shri Atal Bihar Vajpayee and girls’ residence of the hall after Smt. Savitri Phule.”

Further, Prof. V.K. Tewari said, “The Institute is working progressively on the lines of new National Education Policy 2020. The Institute has constituted a task force of 23 faculty members who are making sure that the policy is implemented in the best way possible at IIT Kharagpur. The Institute has also worked tirelessly during the COVID-19 times. Our faculty and researchers developed a rapid portable diagnostic test, painless drug delivery needle, and a physical distancing device, among other innovations and research.”

During this event, foundation stones were laid for two new students Halls of Residence having a capacity of 500 each. IIT Kharagpur already has 23 hostels with a combined capacity of 13,000. These new G+7 facilities will have central airconditioning, a food court and modern firefighting system along with elevators and ramps.

Student strength growth (as of 14.10.2020)

	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21
UG	7034	6988	5780 +1556 (expected from JEE Advanced)
PG	2573	2558	2885
RS	3164	3278	3705
TOTAL	12771	12824	13926

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ABOUT IIT KHARAGPUR

Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT Kharagpur, IIT KGP) is the first IIT and an Institute of National Importance set up in 1951 under a parliamentary act of the Govt. of India. It has also been awarded the status of the Institute of Eminence by the Govt. of India 2019. IIT Kharagpur is known for its wide and diverse academic disciplines (19 departments, 13 schools, 17 centres and 25+ R&D units), and a range of UG, PG and Doctoral programs in areas including Engineering & Technology, Basic Sciences, Biosciences, Earth Sciences, Medical Science & Technology, Social Sciences and Humanities, Management, Law and Entrepreneurship. Currently, the Institute has close to 13000 students and more than 750 faculty members. The Institute has a very high research focus with an annual research output of 2000 publications with 40000 citations, 50-100 patents, and 30 technology incubations as startups.

The Institute conducts several joint degree programs with Indian and foreign institutions with students from over 15 countries enrolled with the Institute as full-time or short-term foreign students. Each year more than 2500 students graduate from IIT Kharagpur who are rated highly employable in the industry. The alumni include stalwarts who have excelled as industry leaders, award-winning academicians, politicians and public figures, sports personalities and even creative professionals. The Institute has been ranked among the top 5 in the NIRF rank for Engineering, Management, Law and Overall and the best in the country in Architecture. Apart from academics and research, IIT Kharagpur has made a considerable impact in community outreach through its socially relevant projects in areas of Education, Malnutrition, Water and Sanitation, Energy and Environment, Affordable Healthcare, Rural Livelihood and much more.

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Kgp Cares: Student Outreach

Campus Lockdown: How IIT KGP is facilitating students on-campus and beyond

Business Insider Outlook Times of India

IIT Kharagpur has recently sent about 35 students to their hometown in Kolkata. This is one among the several student outreach initiatives taken by the Institute administration in the past two months while the campus adopted social distancing followed by the nation wide lockdown.

Classes at the Institute have gone digital since March 17 in the process of following social distancing. Following the lockdown announcement on March 24, all classes were moved to web-conferencing mode, video lectures of NPTEL, or through email. The academic calendar was also revised with the final semester examination scheduled in July and Autumn semester in August end. Further the Moodle platform was made accessible from outside the Institute LAN for submission of assignments by students from outside the Institute LAN. A crucial part of academic programmes are internships which have been rearranged either in online form with corporate houses or at the Institute. Pre-final year students were offered to opt for internships at any department in the Institute on topics of their choice and as per project availability as part of the ongoing COVID19 e-Learning initiatives. But the initiatives undertaken by the Institute were not only limited to academics.

A quick look at the social media handles of Director of IIT Kharagpur, Prof. V K Tewari would give a glimpse of student outreach activities undertaken by the Institute extensively in the past few weeks. The Director has visited all the halls of residence and discussed with the students regarding their lifestyle and extracurricular activities while remaining indoors and maintaining social distancing.

“We take pride at IIT KGP for being a home away from home. I have visited my family members at the halls of residence for the past few weeks. We talked about how they are spending their time during lockdown, how to reduce the risk of infection, minimise social gathering and to ensure social distancing and hygiene norms just as we are doing during these visits. And together in our applause we said heartfilled thanks to the security staff, healthcare professionals, mess and sanitation workers and other essential service providers,” said Prof. Tewari.

Director interacting with girl students at a hall of residence

He has also been reaching out to the students and campus community through his social media handle and encouraging them to learn new skills, acquire new knowledge and pursue activities for which otherwise people fall short of time.

Taking the cue from the Director, many students have been keeping themselves busy in activities. Srijita Pal, PhD scholar at the Dept. of Mathematics has joined her friends to learn ballet to continue with a healthy lifestyle. She talked about several students in her hall of residence who are trying their cooking skills and it is not because of any disruption in mess services.

“Mess food continues to be usual but engaging in activities with a friend is helping us sail through the lockdown period,” she said.

Students leaving for Kolkata on IIT buses

In another initiative, the Institute has been arranging for students to return to their hometowns. At present there are more than 5000 students residing on the campus. Out of them close to 700 students have consented to go home. In the first installment, the Institute has arranged for two buses to drop 35 students to their hometown Kolkata. Further plans are being made to send the other students to their home locations across the country. Students opting to go home have been advised to stay in self-isolation for two weeks.

Talking about the initiative, Kinjal Bhattacharyya, research scholar at the Dept. of Civil Engineering said, “My decision to move to Kolkata was to support my parents in daily activities during this time of crisis. The Institute was kind to do all the arrangements from medical checkups, getting permission and arranging hassle-free travel with safe and sanitized institute buses. I will always be indebted to the institute for taking the initiative.”

His parents Supratip Bhattacharyya and Anuradha Bhattacharyya expressed their gratitude to the IIT KGP security and administration.

“Our son felt completely safe and kept us very well-assured during his stay in the campus. Also we are really happy that he is back now to support us, kudos to the IIT KGP team for taking all the efforts to arrange safe and secure travel of my ward,” they said.

Aniruddha Saha at his hall of residence at IIT KGP

However, the majority of the students have decided to stay back at the campus. While Mouli Majumdar from the Dept. of Architecture and Regional Planning stayed back to complete her PhD project work, Aniruddha Saha from the Dept of Mechanical Engineering, who hails from Barrackpore felt that the campus would be a safer place to stay and would continue with his B.Tech. internship during the summer recess. The students did not have much to complain about except that they were missing their batchmates.

Ankita Gupta who recently reached her home at Basirhat said, “We were looked after quite well with the messes being open and interactions in small groups while maintaining social distancing norms. But being a 1st year M.Sc. student with my friends already away from the campus, I felt being at home would be happier though campus was safer.”

Deepak Verma attending an interactive session by the Director

The Institute has also distributed facial masks to students and made available necessary facilities well within residential boundaries. However, they are also allowed to move outside the hostel for 30-40 minutes, particularly for procuring essential items from the on-campus market. The halls are being sanitized as well at regular intervals with the service staff properly geared with PPEs.

The Institute has been maintaining regular contact with the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India through various platforms and apprising them about student outreach initiatives. The Ministry has set up a web-portal YUKTI (Young India Combating COVID with Knowledge, Technology and Innovation) wherein centrally funded higher educational institutions are to submit reports regarding the efforts and initiatives which have been taken in the wake of COVID-19.

Director, Prof. Tewari thanked Hon’ble Union HRD Minister Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal “Nishank” for his initiative to connect with individual institutions to discuss the wellbeing of the students and campus community and motivate the leadership to continue with their responsibilities and work during these challenging times.

IIT KGP among Toppers at Asia-Pacific Global Conference

Students from IIT Kharagpur have finished among the toppers in the CoreNet Global Academic Challenge 5.0 organized by CoreNet Global Summit Singapore. The Asia-Pacific global conference which was held in March 2020 had participation from 24 leading universities across 18 countries. Among the other toppers are University of Sydney and Delft University of Technology, Netherlands.

The competition involved the role play of an internal corporate real estate team and develop a proactive strategy towards firstly ‘Recession-proof’, to the extent possible, the corporate real estate portfolio, secondly continue to support the business objectives of the corporation, and thirdly ensure that such a strategy does not negatively impact the company in the unlikely event that a recession does not materialize. The teams proposed innovative solutions to problems faced by real estate professionals linked to top global MNCs.

The team from IIT Kharagpur comprised third-year undergraduate students Vikrant Gupta (Mathematics and Computing), Krishnam Kapoor (Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering), Amrit Goswami (Industrial and Systems Engineering, Financial Engineering), and Eknoor Malhotra (Civil Engineering). Their problem statement involved preparation of a comprehensive action plan for the recession-proof real estate portfolio of an American multinational manufacturer of home applications. The team emphasized on minimizing the negative impacts of such recession proofing in case the anticipated economic downturn does not materialize.

“We prepared and presented a detailed action plan for each of the components in the company’s real estate portfolio including Offices, R&D spaces, Manufacturing Plants and Distribution centers followed by a thorough lease management strategy. Our focus was on leveraging recent technologies including RFID, Blockchain, Advanced Analytics, etc. to enable the company to properly optimize space, inventory, and performance. The goal was to reduce expenditure along with incorporation of flexibility and sustainability in their real estate portfolio to prepare the company for the upcoming recession without hampering its growth potential,” Eknoor.

The competition was open to undergraduate and graduate students all across the world. The first round witnessed a participation from 42 universities across the globe. In the subsequent round, teams had to develop an efficient real estate strategy for a given company in either the financial services, IT, or manufacturing sector. Finally, the top 3 teams presented their solution strategies to an expert panel of senior professionals from organizations including Standard Chartered, HSBC, EY, etc. during the conference.

Prof. Bhaskar Bhowmick from Rajendra Mishra School of Engineering Entrepreneurship, who mentored the four-member team from IIT Kharagpur said, “I congratulate the team for their podium finish. It is a proud moment for IIT Kharagpur. I encourage them to continue their endeavors in this domain and wish them luck for the future. Tackling real-world problems is not a piece of cake. Competitions like Corenet provide a great learning curve and I’m glad to be a part of this team. This performance of the IIT Kharagpur team will encourage many such competitors on the campus.”

CoreNet Global is a non-profit association, headquartered in Atlanta, GA, representing more than 11,000 executives in 50 countries with strategic responsibility for the real estate assets of large corporations. The organization’s mission is to advance the practice of corporate real estate through professional development opportunities, publications, research, conferences, designations and networking in 46 local chapters and networking groups globally. Visit the website to learn more.

Ear to the ground

Prof. Jeevanjyoti Chakraborty, Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, received Top Feedback from First Year Undergraduate students for Spring 2019. His faceweb page reveals a lot about his connection with students. More than the academic exploits of the teacher, it talks about how students should proceed if they wanted to collaborate with him in research or what they ought to do for a recommendation, and so on.

With little more than a decade separating Prof. Chakraborty from his students, and given that he has spent a considerable time of his student life at IIT Kharagpur – from his BTech years to his PhD – this connection is perhaps expected. But he has also been pro-actively reaching out to students. And he is not alone in doing this at IIT Kharagpur.

In an informal discussion on teaching styles and his memories of his time at IIT KGP, Prof. Chakraborty informs that he, like Prof. Mrigank Sharad of the Rajendra Mishra School of Engineering Entrepreneurship, proactively seeks students’ opinion by issuing a Google Form which the students are asked to fill in. Unlike the Institute’s feedback ritual, which takes place at the end of the semester, this comes early on. “If I ask them what they like and don’t like only a few weeks after the classes start, I can adjust my teaching accordingly,” explains Prof. Chakraborty, who ascribes the idea to his younger colleague, Prof. Sharad. “Since this is completely anonymous, students have no problems giving their free opinion,” he says. He also adds, “To keep an open channel with students, specifically related to course work, I also give my personal email address to students so that they can write whatever they want.”

Prof. Chakraborty taking a class at Nalanda

There are also things that he is doing differently. He says, “This year, I took rigorous tutorial sessions, which I sometimes neglect in the higher classes. For the 1st year, I borrowed one hour from the lecture time for the problem sheets that students were asked to solve and which I later discussed threadbare. I was asked to do this by Prof. Anirvan Dasgupta of our department who has also won best teaching feedback earlier.”

This grilling, one would expect, would make him pretty unpopular. But the opposite seems to have happened.

Prof. Ghoshal diligently writes down the notes she would share with her class

Students’ peculiar preference for rigour, through which they also seem to sniff out the dedication of the teacher, was evident in the case of Prof. Koeli Ghoshal, Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics, who earned the second slot after Prof. Chakraborty for the Spring 2019 1st Year UG feedback. Prof. Ghoshal, by the way, has won top teaching feedback consistently in different subjects since 2014, when the feedback system was put in place; this was her seventh time win.

Onkar Sabnis, Prof. Ghoshal’s student from the Chemical Engineering Department who attended her class in the Spring semester, says, “Prof. Ghoshal took the MA2 course, which is not a simple course but her teaching methodology, passion and dedication towards the subject made the course seem quite easy and interesting…Ma’am used various methodologies depending upon the topic but the one which I would like to highlight is that in every new lecture she revised the concept taught in the previous one so that students could recollect what was taught in the previous class.”

That perhaps sums up what students prefer. The handholding. The care. The diligence.

Prof. Ghoshal says, “I don’t consider teaching a job, it is my passion and responsibility as well.”

Like her and Prof. Chakraborty, the teachers who have won top feedback from students have tried to live up to their responsibility in their individual ways, as have done others.

Prof. Saibal Gupta of the Department of Geology and Geophysics, who received the INSA Teachers Award for 2019, says, “I present the subject in such a way that they begin to appreciate what they are studying… It is basically giving them respectability about themselves, to make them feel that what they are studying is worth it… something that has a lot of science in it, and also a bit of romance in it….”

Not surprisingly, one of his students said, “Sir is a master story-teller. The interest he evokes in the subject, which he lives and breathes, is infectious.”

Prof. Partha Pratim Das, Head, Rajendra Mishra School of Engineering Entrepreneurship, recently talked about how IIT Kharagpur has constantly experimented with “what would work” with students in “Avenues of Excellence”, a recent film on IIT Kharagpur shot for Doordarshan: “There have been experiments with flipped classrooms.. there have been different ways of handout-based teaching…We have tried to focus on the methods that have worked particularly well here in terms of increasing the engagement of students.”

“The day you take a good class, you know you’ve taken a good class. It’s like having a good meal. You know it when you have enjoyed a good meal, don’t you?” said Prof. Saibal Gupta laughingly.

At least in class, both students and teachers at IIT Kharagpur seem to be enjoying the spread.