Presi ready with excel blueprint

Updated on: Thursday, December 03, 2009

The governing body of Presidency College has brought out a blueprint that it had prepared way back in 1995 — which talked about how different the college would be if it were to become a deemed university.

Now that it is all set to become a full-fledged university, the governing body is once again revising the blueprint so that it can be placed before the state government. The next governing body meeting of the college is scheduled in mid-January.

While it has been decided that Presidency University will be a unitary one, with no affiliated colleges, there are many ways in which it seeks to be a unique institution.

The blueprint was prepared when renowned political science teacher Amal Mukhopadhyay was principal. Incidentally, he is one of the members of the college’s governing body and spoke about some of the thoughts that had gone into the plans.

“We named the document in question the Plan of Alternative Higher Education, hoping that one day the college becomes a university. Those days, one was talking of a deemed university. Naturally, now that it will be a fullfledged university, the plan has to be further upgraded,” Mukhopadhyay said.

Among other things, the blueprint calls for a complete syllabus revision for all subjects, breaking away from the “CU mould”. Not only should the syllabus of every subject be completely revamped after considering latest research and advancements, courses on new subjects — that have not been tried out in other universities of the country — also need to be introduced in the postgraduate level.

Ergonomy and demography are two such specialised subjects that can be created once the college becomes a university, Mukhopadhyay said. “Take the case of ergonomy as a new subject. While departments such as physiology, zoology and even statistics have been dealing with this piecemeal, ergonomy has developed into a modern day need — so much so that we need to look at it as a separate subject. The same thing can be said about demography — which the departments of statistics and sociology have been dealing with separately — but which needs to be better co-ordinated,” he added.

Among the other subjects that the blueprint talks about are communication and culture.

A whole change of teaching method has been suggested in the blueprint, where a participatory style is to be ushered in, instead of the traditional “chalk and talk” method. “After a teacher has completed a topic, he goes and sits down on a student’s seat, while the latter goes up and explains to the class what was taught by the teacher,” Mukhopadhyay said.

The plan also calls for a change in the entire assessment system. While there will be continuous assessment, even reference work done in the library or the number of hours spent there will earn a student grade points, not to speak of the many projects that one has to do each semester.

The plan suggests that there would be no concept of pass and honours subjects at the undergraduate level.

Presi ready with excel blueprint

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