Couple of days back I was nominated as a member in the board of studies for Computer Science Department – Govt. of Pondicherry, Bharathidasan Government College for Women. Indeed this is an honour for me – I was pleasantly surprised when I received the nomination letter from their Principal S.Kumuda.
BGCW is an Arts and Science college conducting UG and PG degree courses. The college is run by Govt. of Pondicherry with a social inclination of providing quality education to girls from not only urban area but from rural and most-rural background as well – in fact, for a good percentage of students who graduate every year from this college, they are the very first in their village to study beyond higher secondary school eduation. Recently BGCW became a Deemed college, but continuing to award degree of the well recognized “Pondicherry University”.
As per UGC (University Grants Commission of India) guidelines all Deemed institutions are required to constitue a Board of Studies for each department which will be chartered to design and approve all the course curriculum and syllabus. The consituents of the board are to be picked from various background – from the college faculty, university, academia, industry and past students. I was nominated as a representative of the “IT Industry”.
Today was the first meeting of the board. Before this I had little academia exposure (other than as a student), so I was not sure on what to expect. But at the end of the day as I write this, I am pleased with our output. The computer science board was fortunate to have experienced academician – Mr.Subramanian from Pondy University and Mr.Arumugam from Madura Kamaraj University. Since they had done similar work several times in their career, the others in the board like me found it on easy ground.