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December 17, 2019
President of India Presents Visitor’s Awards 2019
Photo: The President of India, Ram Nath Kovind, at the Conference of Vice-Chancellors of Central Universities in New Delhi on December 17, 2019. On the left is the Chairman, University Grants Commission of India (UGC), Prof. D. P. Singh, and on the right is the Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank.
Photo: The President of India, Ram Nath Kovind, addressing the Conference of Vice-Chancellors of Central Universities in New Delhi on December 17, 2019.
Photo: The President of India, Ram Nath Kovind, presenting the 5th Visitor’s Awards, 2019, at the Conference of Vice-Chancellors of Central Universities, at Rashtrapati Bhavan, in New Delhi on December 17, 2019.
New Delhi, December 17, 2019 — The President of India, Ram Nath Kovind, hosted a Conference of Vice-Chancellors of Central Universities, Directors of IISERs, and Indian Institute of Science Bengaluru, today at Rashtrapati Bhavan. During the inaugural session of the Conference, the President presented the 5th Visitor’s Awards.
The Visitor’s Award - for Research in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences was presented to Prof. Sibnath Deb from the Department of Applied Psychology, Pondicherry University; for Research in Physical Sciences was presented to Prof. Sanjay Puri from the School of Physical Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University; for Research in Biological Sciences was jointly presented to Prof. Asad Ullah Khan from the Inter-disciplinary Biotechnology Unit, Aligarh Muslim University, and Dr. Partima from the Special Centre for Nanoscience, Jawaharlal Nehru University. The President conferred the Visitor’s Award for Technology Development to Dr. Shaon Ray Chaudhuri from the Department of Microbiology, Tripura University.
The President said that the objective of our central universities should be to continually grow and upgrade themselves to the best of global standards. It is here that Vice-Chancellors and Directors have to provide leadership. As an immediate goal, they should strive to become the best in the country and healthily compete with each other. After that, they must aspire to compete with the best in the world. But to achieve the levels where they can compete, they must collaborate amongst themselves, other state and private universities, and learn from the experiences of each other.
The President stated that as leaders of universities and institutions, Vice-Chancellors and Directors are also mandated to develop leadership qualities in their students. He noted that beyond classrooms and labs, students should be encouraged to take up socially-oriented ventures through NSS or other clubs. He said that developing meaningful linkages between the academic community and local industry should be a top priority. Students must be encouraged to emerge as job-creators rather than job-seekers.
Later, addressing the concluding session of the Conference, the President said that universities and higher educational institutions should play a leading role in addressing the specific challenges faced by our nation and our society. Many of these challenges require creative and innovative solutions. It is their paramount duty to ensure that their campuses emerge as spaces that nurture free expression and ideas, where experimentation is encouraged. Failure is not ridiculed but seen as learning. Also, universities should become the laboratories for exposing students to the problems concerning nation-building.
The President stated that students should be encouraged to take up academic and extra-curricular work with a distinct community orientation. He urged universities to make a conscious effort to integrate community-oriented projects as part of their curriculum.
|GlobalGiants.Com|
President Kovind hosts a Conference of Vice-Chancellors of Central Universities, Directors of IISERs and IISc Bengaluru; says it is their paramount duty to ensure that their campuses emerge as spaces that nurture free expression and ideas. https://t.co/N58lOWRoiA pic.twitter.com/oxlA8T768L
— President of India (@rashtrapatibhvn) December 17, 2019
Edited & Posted by the Editor | 11:05 AM | Link to this Post
