My first major stop was Pune, in Maharashtra state, and about 150 km southeast of Mumbai. Here, I visited the Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA). This is India’s top research institution for astrophysics, and runs a very active visitors program for faculty snd students, as well as frequent workshops and conferences. IUCAA is involved in many major international astronomy projects, and is on track to garnering the next Advanced LIGO gravitational wave detector for India. Faculty and graduate students are welcome for extended stays, ideally centered around a workshop related to their work. Guest accommodations and meals are available at IUCAA itself – Dr. Ajit Kembhavi, Director, is happy to host you, so you just have to pay your way to get to Pune! The beautiful courtyard at IUCAA, pictured here, and containing statues of Galileo, Newton, Einstein, and the ancient Indian astronomer Aryabhatta, really lends itself to thought and reflection.
What about undergraduate students? Any undergraduate student that is considering an exchange visit to India should seriously consider Pune University. (IUCAA is also located on the Pune University campus.) This university has a beautiful sprawling campus that is set apart from the city traffic, and has Departments in most major subjects, including Physics. It is also home to the Indian office of the Ontario-Maharashtra-Goa exchange program. Vaishali Potnis, OMG India Coordinator, is happy to help any students settle into Pune. There are already about 10 Ontario undergraduate students on exchange at Pune University in any given year. The OMG program website (http://www.omgprogram.org/)describes how to apply for travel grants.
Later in my trip, in New Delhi, I visited the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU; http://www.ignou.ac.in). This is the largest distance studies university in the world, with 3.5 million students! IGNOU also operates in 40 other countries besides India. I met with Dr. Ravi Singh, who holds a PhD in Physics from Western, supervised by Prof. Mahi Singh. Ravi is Director of the Regional Services Division at IGNOU, and shared his vision of expanded offerings in distance education. Considering that India currently has 12% rate of postsecondary education, and wants to get to about 30% like the USA and other developed countries, the only feasible way to approach such numbers in the next decade or two is by relying on distance education. Here, distance education does not mean fully online education, as there are test-taking centers across the country and also access to regional laboratory facilities. Ravi felt that Western and other foreign universities could join in this effort by offering summer courses on site (e.g., at Western) and also creating new online courses not covered in IGNOU’s current curriculum.
I also visited the Sharda University (http://www.sharda.ac.in/), a new private university in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, some 40 km east of New Delhi. Private universities are a new phenomenon in India, operating on a for-profit basis and offering an entryway to university education for those who cannot get into top government schools but have the money to pay for an education. In a country with very limited spaces in the top public univerisites, there is a big market for private providers. Sharda University opened only in 2009, but boasts impressive new facilities and already operates with many domestic and international students. I was hosted by Prof. Sunil Kumar Mishra, who organized a very lavish reception, and gave me a chance to talk about Western and also some of my group’s work on star and planet formation. Dr. Mishra is Director of the Research and Technology Development Center, and the science effort here is very much in the applied sciences. Due to its nice atmosphere, facilities, and existing group of international students, this university also seemed an interesting destination for Canadian undergraduates seeking an exchange term in India.
Overall, a very informative trip to a rapidly changing country. I found New Delhi to be completely transformed from my last visit in 2004, with a bright gleaming new airport, new highways, monuments, glass-paneled office towers, and public transport options. Western stands to benefit by staying engaged with India and indeed all the emerging economies of the world.
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