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It is not viewed proper
perhaps for the Director
himself to extol the achievements of his institute,
lest he be
considered presumptuous! However, I cannot help but feel really proud
of what
we have been able to do since our inception in August 2006. We had a
modest
beginning in borrowed space of the Indian Institute Technology (IIT),
Kharagpur
in Salt Lake, Kolkata, with 38 undergraduate students in our integrated
Masters
programme. In 2007, we added another building, courtesy space provided
by the
IIT, while our students were housed in hostel buildings provided
by the
National Institute of Technical Teachers' Training & Research
institute,
also in Salt Lake. But, in July 2008, we decided to move lock, stock
and barrel
to Mohanpur, contiguous to our real campus that is being built in
two-hundred
acres of land in nearby Haringhata that is just 15 minutes' bicycle
ride away,
in order to provide the semblance of a green campus, wherein
students, faculty
and staff staff can live in harmony with nature. Though it
was not easy to do this in
rural Bengal, in a place that is about 60 km away from
Kolkata, we were
fortunate to have the help given by the West Bengal University of
Animal and
Fishery Sciences, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Vidyalaya and the Dairy
Department of
West Bengal. As a result we were able to quickly renovate four major
buildings,
viz., P.C. Roy Hall of residence for boys, Lilavati Hall of residence
for
girls, J. C. Bose building for lecture halls, teaching laboratories and
faculty
offices, C.V. Raman building for research laboratories, and a slew of
other
small buildings that accommodate labs, workshops, offices and faculty
quarters.
In addition, we were able to start this year a creche and a Montessori
school:
"The Bud" that helps the
children of our young faculty-couples to be looked after while they are
at
work. Today, nearly 250 undergrads, 100 research scholars, and 50 % of
our
teachers are residing in the salubrious and lush green campus of
Mohanpur (or
in nearby Kalyani, Mohanpur or Jagulia townships), while we oversee
with bated
breath the growth of our real campus in the nearby land that is already
cordoned off by a 6 km long boundary wall. A cluster of guest houses on
campus
enables overnight halts for our Kolkata-based faculty for enhanced
contact hours. With time we expect 90% of our faculty to
stay on campus or near it, for facilitating easy access to research
labs,
students and other institutional duties.
On the academic front, we adopted a strategy of
giving solidity to the first two years of our general course
curriculum,
covering all basic sciences, by inviting some senior Professors who
have had
wide university experience of teaching young undergrads, to join as
faculty.
This was coupled with inducting young Assistant Professors (who
comprise nearly
70 % of our faculty strength) who are more adept to handle specialized
courses
and also can get down to the business of developing their research
facilities.
As the seniors colleagues wither away the younger lot is expected to
take over
and provide leadership! Our courses are also designed in away to
emphasize the
importance of interdisciplinary research and to implement a holistic
integrated
approach to science education and research. Keeping this in mind, we
have
initiated an Earth Science programme that is hugely important in these
testing
times of concern for climate change, ecology, ground water arsenic
contamination, and other pressing issues that need interdisciplinary
studies.
In order to provide the right balance to teaching and research we have
initiated this year three other programmes: an integrated post B.Sc.
Ph. D
curriculum, a post M.Sc course and a two-year M.S.(by thesis) for B.
Tech
students. Within the last year I am
happy to report that we have set up 400 and 500 MHz NMR and a plethora
of other
smaller spectroscopy instruments, a pulsed laser deposition system, a
squid
magnetometer, a powder X-ray diffraction unit, a Raman spectrometer
with a high
pressure cell, a semiconductor-optics lab, a large number of organic
and
inorganic synthesis labs, several
tissue-culture facilities, a state-of-the-art optics &
spectroscopy lab
that consists of various microscopes, a modern computer centre, a good
library,
etc. We are soon going to install a
confocal microscope, a physical property measurement system, a single
crystal
X-ray unit, a microcalorimeter equipment, electron spectroscopy
set-ups, etc.
It is gratifying to note that faculty members have started publishing
research
papers using these facilities.
Let
us not be complacent, however
- we have a long way to go, but I feel confident that the foundation
has
already been laid for an outstanding institution that the country can
feel
proud of. Personally, I am humbled and grateful to be associated from
the
beginning with this challenging venture.
Sushanta Dattagupta
(DIRECTOR)
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