T.N. Governor urges varsities and colleges to harness alumni potential

Gov. R.N. Ravi urges universities to engage alumni for student welfare. He suggests meaningful exchanges, inviting alumni to visit, and investing in research. He also encourages STEM programmes and creating Scopus indexed journals to spread language richness. 20 institutions, incl. IIT Madras & NIT Tiruchi, were felicitated.

Universities and colleges must actively engage with their alumni for the welfare of students, said Governor R.N. Ravi.

At an event organised on Wednesday to felicitate 20 institutions for their performance in the National Institutional Ranking Framework 2023, Mr. Ravi said higher educational institutions must tap into the strength of the alumni. Universities and colleges must have meaningful exchanges with each other instead of working in silos, he said.

“Each of our universities have produced a large number of students who have achieved excellence in life, and they are located in different parts of the world,’ he said calling for an “institutionalised approach” to engage the alumni and enhance the capacity of the institution. “They must be invited to visit the institutions and address the students as this would motivate the students,” he said, adding that in research the alumni could chip in by investing in the institution in the form of seed money. 

Mr. Ravi also called upon teachers to encourage more students to join STEM programmes and address the apparent mathematics phobia among students. Earlier during an interaction, Tamil University officials said they could not participate in NIRF as their research work in the language did not feature in Scopus indexed journals. All ranking institutions relied on such journals, and this kept out universities that specialised in language studies, they rued. Mr. Ravi urged the university to create a Scopus indexed journal to spread the richness of the language across the world.

As many as 20 of the 22 institutions, including the IIT Madras, NIT Tiruchi, Anna University, besides private universities and some of the top ranked autonomous colleges were felicitated. Each institution made a presentation on their performance. Two State-run institutions, the Madras Medical College and Presidency College, did not participate.

The Principal Secretary to Governor Anandrao V. Patil, V. Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, as well as director of NIT Tiruchi, Vice-Chancellors of various State and private universities, academicians, faculties, representatives and officials participated.