The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras is making history by not only setting up its first international campus — IIT Madras Zanzibar — but by also appointing the first ever female director across IITs.
Prof Preeti Aghalayam, who currently works as a Professor in the Chemical Engineering department at IIT Madras, has now been appointed as the head of the Zanzibar campus. With the campus just a few months away from its commencement, indianexpress.com talks to Prof Aghalayam about the new adventure, her role, scholarships, conquering a male-dominated society, and more.
Preeti Aghalayam: This is absolutely unchartered territory for us. I think the biggest challenge has been that we set ourselves a fairly aggressive timeline because we were keen to align it with the academic calendar here. This means our classes at the new campus should also begin by October.
This is a very compressed timeline, especially considering that there is student selection, faculty deployment, discussing and approving courses with the experts, and more. It is amazing and sometimes I wonder how we manage to do so many of these things. From several ministerial discussions, signing the MoU recently to holding discussions with our counterparts and team in Zanzibar, I think it’s better to frame them not as challenges, but as opportunities.
Looking ahead, there’s going to be tons of challenges. Thankfully, we have a (temporary) campus in Zanzibar. We are holding regular meetings with our team in Zanzibar; there are several things that still need to be taken care of such as housing for students, faculty, catering facility, getting the students here, and ensuring that visa paperwork is done in time for us and for the students. These are a few details, and I am sure there will be bigger challenges, and we are trying to anticipate and plan for those well in advance. The IIT Madras team, our team in Zanzibar and the government have been working together to plan for a bright future for this campus.
IE: When is the IIT Zanzibar’s permanent campus expected to be complete?
Preeti Aghalayam: As of now, we have a temporary campus set up and the permanent one will take some time. We are building this new campus on 200 acres of land from scratch and are planning to complete it in another three years. The application process, meanwhile, will conclude on August 6.
IE: What will be the admission criteria for the IIT Zanzibar campus? Do students need to clear the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) for this?
Preeti Aghalayam: This is a new region and while JEE works for India, people here do not know about JEE at all. To seek admission to the IIT Madras Zanzibar campus, students need to have cleared their basic Class 12 education — which can be from an international board, CBSE, state boards etc — and then there will be a screening test and an interview round for selection.
Back when IITs had just started in the 50s and 60s, interviews were an important part of the admission process, and while that is not possible at such a large scale now in India, it is feasible on the new campus. I feel interviews are a good way of getting to know the candidate. For locals here, we have substituted the Class 12 eligibility with what they call ‘form six’.
The operational expense for this institution is coming from the local government as they are funding it. However, the other IITs were built back in the 50s and 60s, and we are building this one in 2023, so there are bound to be some differences (in the cost). Obviously, this kind of tuition fee is extremely competitive with what you would spend in the UK or the US. It’s also commensurate with what several engineering students are spending in private institutions in India. We have had discussions and debates with experts to reach this figure, considering all aspects.
IE: Have you received requests for partnerships from foreign universities?
Preeti Aghalayam: We have had several outreaches from different foreign universities for this project. The African School of Economics wants to partner with us because they bring social science strength and they synergize well with engineering and science and technology strengths that we have. They are a big institution and are building a new campus near our campus here. We have been joking that like the small city of Cambridge in Massachusetts has Harvard and MIT, we will grow the African School of Economics and IIT and help bring that level of education to this island.
We have had a few other outreaches from different institutions that want to work with us and we are reaching out to our alumni network too. We are going to sit down, evaluate and put things together nicely. We want to carve out, for example, a semester exchange study abroad programme for the Zanzibar campus students with our partners.
So far, the University of Birmingham is likely to immediately come on board and at least five or 10 other institutions like that, which we will leverage all the relationships that we’ve built up at IIT-M to ensure that students get access to different opportunities.
Courtesy : The Indian Express
