Updated on: Wednesday, September 16, 2015
The HRD Ministry is learnt to have quietly come to an agreement with academics from across countries to teach more than 200 short term academic courses in Indian institutes starting this November through its new scheme — Global Initiative for Academics Network (GIAN).
The first GIAN by HRD Ministry backed course by a foreign faculty is expected to start with NIT Surathkal this November. Prashant V Kamat, the John A. Zahm Professor of Science at the University of Notre Dame in USA, it is learnt, is likely to take the first course to be launched under GIAN at the NIT, officials from the HRD ministry said on condition of anonymity. A final list of global academics who will come and teach in India under GIAN will be approved through the last leg of the screening process to be held later this month.
The first GIAN by HRD Ministry aims at increasing the footfalls of reputed international faculty to Indian academic institutes, providing opportunities for both students to interact with global academics and for the faculty to engage and COLLABORATE with them and develop high quality study material through on going academic relationships.
Prof Amar Nath Samanta, Group Coordinator for all IIT, NIT and IIITs among others told ET that the responsefrom foreign faculty is very encouraging and the numbers could soon touch 500.
The HRD Ministry is also pulling out all stops to get GIAN going. Incidentally, a few IIT and IIMs had raised concerns about paying this huge a remuneration to the visiting faculty citing insufficiency of FUNDS available with them. IIT Madras is learnt to be leading the tally so far with over 25 courses expected to be taught by visiting foreign faculty.