IITB mentoring IIT Goa and IIT Dharwad

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After the government announced the inception of 7 more IITs two years back, there has been doubt if the new ones can match the level of the old ones. To set up a new IIT is a challenging job in itself. It has to maintain the standards set by the old IITs. To develop a system and culture followed by the old IITs in the new ones, old IITs have been assigned the job of mentoring.

The objective for old IITs to mentor two new IITs lies in the answer to the question – What makes IITs different from other government colleges? “IITs are one of the prestigious institutions in the country, and they ensure a student’s overall growth, and not just academic development. Hence, the old well established IITs help to implement a similar system in the new ones.” says Prof. Shiva Prasad.

IIT Bombay is currently mentoring two new IITs, IIT Goa and IIT Dharwad(in Karnataka). Both the IITs have accepted new undergraduate students through JEE for the academic year 2016-17. Having admitted roughly 120 and 90 students(IIT Goa and IIT Dharwad respectively) through JEE last autumn, they completed their first full semesters.

IIT Goa is currently operating from the campus of Goa engineering college. Students are provided rooms (owned by GEO) to stay. All the other services like water, electricity and mess are shared with Goa engineering college. As for IIT Dharwad, it would be initially functioning out on the campus of Water and Land Management Institute (WALMI)

To develop the system from scratch, Devang Khakhar, director of IIT Bombay was appointed as the mentoring director of IIT Goa and Dharwad. All the fee payment of students were done to the registrar, IIT Bombay and cash section of IITB had two separate accounts for the same and the finances were handled by IIT Bombay temporarily.

IIT Goa and Dharwad currently have three departments: Computer Science, Electrical and Mechanical. Classes of Maths, Chemistry, Physics and Computer Science were conducted for all the students in the Autumn semester keeping the course structure in both the IITs the same as is in IIT Bombay. Relevant department professors from IIT Bombay were chosen to conduct these classes for whom accommodation will be provided in respective campuses. Classes of Biology, Physics, Maths are running in the Spring Semester. Department Introductory course for all the three departments will run in the Spring Semester and the two Department Introductory courses for mechanical and electrical are combined into a single course.

On 7th of January, the President approved the names of the Directors for 5 new IITs given by the HRD ministry. The HRD ministry had forwarded the names to the President after holding interviews for the same. As cited in DNA, Prof. B.K Mishra is the director of IIT Goa and Prof. Seshu Pasumarthy is the director of IIT Dharwad. Both the directors can now independently take their decision regarding the structure of the institute, but IIT-B will continue to mentor them till the directors feels that their institutes can handle themselves.