The premier Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) will start its “School of Engineering” by the mid of this year. JNU which is known for producing academicians, bureaucrats, politicians and scientists will now also be producing engineers. The School of Engineering slated to start from July 2018, would be admitting its first batch of students through JEE (Mains).
JNU Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar while talking exclusively to The Pioneer said that the programme would be a “dual degree” programme which is ‘interdisciplinary’ in nature.
“The School of Engineering will offer unique programme. It will be a dual degree engineering programme as the students in their first four years will study their core engineering while in the final year they will be doing their masters in one of the areas of social sciences, humanities and languages,” said M Jagadesh Kumar.
The “School of Engineering” will have two streams-’Computer Science’ and ‘Electronics and Comm-unication Engineering’ and will admit 50 students in each stream for this year.
The number of intakes is to be gradually increased in subsequent years.
“The combination of science and humanities/social science would be a powerful one and would provide a variety of options in terms of subjects. For an example, it could be a B. Tech in Computer Science and Masters in Computational linguistics or Masters in Korean Studies,” said V-C.
He said that University Grants Commission (UGC) has provided Rupees 180 crore for the start of JNU’s “School of Engineering”. It faculty would be drawn from JNU’s “Special Centre for Nanoscience” and “School of Computer and Systems Sciences”. Also it will recruit 10-15 new faculty in coming six months before the launch of “School of Engineering”.
The JNU will also start a “Special Centre in Northeastern Studies” within six months.
“We are going to start a Special Centre in Northeastern Studies, because northeastern region is a very important area of our country and needs to be studied very deeply in terms of its culture, economy, ecosystem, geography and several other dimensions,” said Kumar.
JNU has already received a grant for building hostel from Northeastern Council and is going to start its construction very soon.
“We are planning to talk to Chief-Minister of eight northeastern States and get their support and advice in start of this special centre,” said Vice-Chancellor.