Calcutta University has started shifting the engineering workshop from the Ballygunge campus to the Salt Lake campus for the benefit of BTech students.
Engineering students of the university, whose classes are held on the Salt Lake campus, had to travel to Ballygunge Science College thrice a week to take lessons in engineering mechanics and drawing in the workshop.
An official of the university said a work order to dismantle the workshop on the Ballygunge campus and fetch some machines from Rajabazar science college has been issued.
The 6,000sq ft workshop on the Salt Lake campus, also known as the tech campus, will be opened when the current first semester students are promoted to the second.
Second-semester students in the four-year BTech course have to compulsorily attend workshop classes.
“The workshop on the Salt Lake campus will be made operational by the time CU’s BTech students (those in the first semester) are promoted to the second semester. They don’t have to take the trouble of travelling to Ballygunge Science College anymore,” said CU vice-chancellor Sonali Chakravarti Banerjee.
She had said in May 2018 that the university had released funds to build a workshop on the tech campus.
Because of the absence of a workshop on the tech campus, students were required to travel to Ballygunge ever since the university had launched the four-year BTech programme in eight disciplines, including computer science and engineering and information technology, in 2015.
Only the Ballygunge campus so far had a workshop, which was set up in 2000 for the students of the four-year BTech course in jute and fibre technology.
As the duration of the other eight engineering courses was three years till 2015, the students were not required to attend workshop classes.
“The long commute between Salt Lake and Ballygunge, apart from inconveniencing students, ate into the time for theoretical classes,” a professor of radio physics said.
An official of the university said the question of attending workshop classes would arise if the state government allowed the universities to reopen their campuses in November. Campuses have been closed since March last year because of Covid.
Sankhayan Chowdhury, a professor in the computer science and engineering department and the general secretary of the Calcutta University Teachers’ Association, said they were relieved to know that the workshop was being finally set up on the Salt Lake campus.