Recipients of various awards during the convocation at IIT Guwahati on Wednesday. Picture by Eastern Projections

Guwahati, May 26: The Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, is planning to make itself a world class institution by wooing more students and teachers from abroad.

IIT Guwahati director Gautam Barua said the institute could find a place on the global map only if it had a strong international presence on its campus.

“We have to be more aggressive in getting visiting faculty from abroad. So far, we have admitted very few foreign students and our task is to significantly increase the presence of foreign students on the campus,” Barua said while presenting the director’s report on the occasion of the institute’s 12th convocation today.

For this, the admission process might have to be modified and “we have to actively reach out and create appropriate infrastructure”.

The institute has started reaching beyond its borders but such steps have been taken as a reaction to initiatives taken by institutions from Europe, Australia and Singapore.

“We have signed a number of memoranda of understanding and interactions have started with a few institutions and time has come for IIT Guwahati to take pro-active action to such outreach programmes,” Barua said.

A total of 655 students were awarded their degrees.

DoNER minister B.K. Handique, who was supposed to be the chief guest and deliver the convocation address, could not make it to the function as he was indisposed.

Handique’s speech was read out in absentia by Chandan Mahanta, a faculty member.

“We need to carry out more research for the betterment of the lives of people, to feed the hungry and to reduce environmental damage and climate change,” the minister said.

Barua said the institute had a student strength of 3,000 and faculty membership of 200, adding that it has set a target to increase the number of students to 6,000 in the next six years.

“As the student strength was 1,400 in 2005, we have more than doubled our strength in the last five years and hence the target (6,000 students in the next six years) can be achieved,” Barua said.

There are challenges too, the director admits. “Besides issues regarding infrastructure that has to be set up to meet the expansion, recruitment of faculty and technical staff are the biggest challenges,” he said.

On the faculty side, Barua said it had to step up the recruitment process as it had been able to add on an average of about 30 faculty members per year and this had to be stepped up to about 70 per year.

He revealed that the IIT Guwahati Technology Incubation Centre was established as a separate society to allow entrepreneurial activities on campus, but it had not been successful in wooing entrepreneurs.

He also urged the faculty to bring in more sponsored projects. A total of 202 consultancy projects, valued at Rs 5 crore, were undertaken during 2009-10, Barua said.

R.P. Singh, the chairman of the board of governors, IIT Guwahati, said that lack of ethical and moral leadership had led to reduced cohesion of society as a whole.

“As the leaders of the future, you will need to be more service-oriented, sensitive and responsible to the society that you live in. Prosperity comes through concentration, consistency and co-operation, but unfortunately, we have lacked these,” he said.

“The gigantic task which you have to accomplish can only be possible if you co-operate. As a loner, you cannot be an achiever,” he added.