The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

EDUCATION

Campus
IGNOU opens doors to higher education through FM
Smriti Kak

Aimed at opening doors to quality higher education, five radio channels, an ambitious initiative of the Indira Gandhi Open University (IGNOU) and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, were launched on January 26.

Four of the channels, named Gyan Vani FM Radio Channels, will be broadcast in four metros — Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata..

Besides, there will be one Higher Education Channel under the Gyan Darshan Educational TV initiative of the Ministry of Human Resource and Development.

The channels were inaugurated by the HRD Minister, Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi. According to IGNOU, the aim of launching the channels is to increase the access to higher education and enhance its quality by best possible convergence of multimedia.

The higher education channel will be co-ordinated by the Consortium for Educational Communication, UGC. The signal will be transmitted through microwave to IGNOU earth stations.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Joshi said the vision of Gyan Vani is to bring about educational and social development of the community through affordable tools of communication. The Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Mr. Ravi Shankar Prasad, said that for the nine million strong college and university students in the conventional education system, this initiative would come as a powerful value addition and enhancement of learning opportunities outside the boundaries of the campus.

Prof. H P Dikshit, VC of IGNOU, said that 85 per cent of the telecast would be for curriculum based programmes and the remaining would be for enrichment programmes. The channels will be transmitted 16 hours initially and will be gradually turned into round-the-clock channels.

IIT Director bags Padma Shri

Prof R. S. Sirohi Dr R S Sirohi, Director, IIT Delhi, was awarded the Padma Shri by the President, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Azad. Dr. Sirohi, who is the founder member of the Indian Laser Association and the Chairman of SPIE India Chapter, has earlier been decorated with the Humbolt Research Award by Alexander von Humbolt Foundation Bonn, Germany, for his outstanding contribution to Optical Metrology.

Having been the principal co-ordinator for 24 projects sponsored by the government funding agencies and industries, Dr. Sirohi’s research areas have been Ellipsometry, Optical Metrology, Optical Instrumentation and Holography.

With more than 200 paper in national as well as international journals to his credit, Dr. Sirohi is also the Chairman, Board of Governing Council, National Council of Science Museums, and member on the boards of several institutes.

Job-oriented Spanish courses
Hauz Khas-based Instituto Hispania has introduced some new job-oriented Spanish diploma courses, focusing on translation and interpretation, keeping in view the big demand in the job market. The institute has been offering its services since 1997.

It promotes the Spanish language and culture and offers some other short intensive modules of Spanish language courses of different levels — basic, intermediate, advance superior, business Spanish and Spanish for tourism..
In the global scenario, Spanish is one of the official languages of European Union and international organizations like United Nations and its various affiliates, such as WHO, WTO, FAO, UNESCO, UNIDO etc. Apart from this, Spanish is the official language in 20 sovereign countries. It is the second official language in the US. With a 33% Spanish-speaking population, about 400 million people speak this language throughout the world. In India, Instituto Hispania is the only associated centre of Instituto Cervantes. Instituto Cervantes was created in 1991 for promoting the Spanish language and culture abroad with the patronage of HHMM, the king and queen of Spain. Owing to its important association with the external relations, it falls under the scheme of Ministry of External Affairs of Spain.

Inter-college debate at NSS Centre

The NSS Centre, University of Delhi, organised an inter-college debate on `Western influence is a curse for Indian society’. Participants from 17 colleges put forth their views on the subject in both Hindi as well as English.

Girls from Lady Shriram College walked away with the top honours, while Miranda House and Dyal Singh College Evening came second and third, respectively.

Consolation prizes were awarded to Stuti Ghosh of Jesus and Mary College and Rajneesh of Khalsa Evening. Prizes for best interjection were bagged by Pratibha Arora of Bharati College and Mrityunjay Tiwari of Satyawati College.

The Dean of Colleges, Dr. Kiran Dattar, in the inaugural address, appreciated the work carried out by the NSS.

Special Oracle examination fee

Oracle India Private Limited, through Oracle University in India, is offering a special examination fee, which is 50 per cent less than the usual amount for all Oracle certified professional aspirants.

The examination can be taken at five Oracle test centers and more than 60 authorised prometric testing centres in the country. This offer is valid till the 31st of March.

Top training company title for NIIT

Ms Shampi Venkatesh, delivery head, NIIT Education, being honoured by Mr Shyam Malhotra, editor-in-chief of Dataquest.

Dataquest has conferred the ‘Top Training Company’ title on NIIT for the year 2002-03. The award was presented to NIIT at the Dataquest Top 20 Awards ceremony by Editor-in-Chief of Dataquest, Mr Shyam Malhotra, for holding on tenaciously during challenging times, redefining business, developing new markets, and making it decisively to the top.

According to the Dataquest, NIIT, with training revenues of Rs. 418 crores, was ahead of Aptech and SSI. “This prestigious award is a tribute to the NIIT student, the NIIT faculty, hundreds of companies who employ GNIIT students. The trust and support of successful NIITians will help us achieve greater strides in our path to excellence in future,” said, Mr Pradeep Narayanan, Head of NIIT Education India.

During the year, NIIT’s new product introductions helped cater to the growing manpower needs of the burgeoning ITES industry under ‘Networkz’ brand. NIIT also launched programs in multimedia and ‘IT-in careers’ in addition to updating its flagship GNIIT program.

NIIT also announced IT degree programs in partnership with the Karnataka State Open University and BR Ambedkar Open University in the formal sector. With this move, NIIT fulfilled a major demand of the student community for formal training certifications.

In an effort to enlarge its global footprint, NIIT made major inroads into China, crossing the 100 education centre-mark by partnering with 10 universities and three software technology parks.

Inputs by Nalini Ranjan