University of Pune will set up faculty of technology

The University of Pune (UoP) will set up the faculty of technology, which will offer an integrated MTech and PhD programme from this academic year. The move will increase the interface between industry and academia.

At the annual UoP senate meeting on Saturday, vice chancellor, Raghunath Shevgaonkar, said, “There was a long-pending proposal of increasing industry interface as both industry as well as the university need good academicians who can take education to new levels.

“Similarly, till now both industry and academia had negative opinions of each other. Industry thinks what is taught in the university cannot be implemented in reality, while the academia would think that what is taught is right,” he said.

Shevgaonkar said industry needs multi-disciplinary people to solve problems and the new course would help students take an interdisciplinary approach and fulfil the needs of the industry. The new course would be the toughest as within four years, the students will have their MTech as well as PhD degrees.

The course is expected to begin in July from this academic year, 2011-10, he said.

“Students doing their MTech may need some specialisation, so we have formed four boards like mechanical, electronics and telecommunication, information technology and computers and biotechnology and sciences,” he said.

Shevgaonkar added there would be a board of studies for framing the curricula. It will have two members from industry and two from academia. Industry has given complete finance for the course.

Interestingly, the UoP started a wine technology course in 2010-11 at affiliated colleges. Graduates in botany, zoology, biotechnology, microbiology or chemistry are eligible to apply for that course.