As the Vice Chancellor of this premier university, I am extremely pleased to share this space to converse with all of you. The University of Madras is a post- sesquicentennial institution which has forged a glorious path for itself and has been the site for significant scientific discoveries as well as the beacon for national and regional societal transformation. It has successfully managed to hold aloft its tradition even while keeping up with the emerging trends. One reason for this is the way in which the university has kept alive its interactions with all the stakeholders.
The COVID 19 pandemic has introduced a ‘new normal’ and its impact is felt in the workings of the university as well. The students have been attending the lectures online. While online learning has the advantage of being anytime and anywhere, it has taken away the peer group interaction and peer learning which are integral aspects of the university experience. We look forward to welcoming you to the campus very soon. Meanwhile, our faculty and administration will continue to bring the best to the virtual classrooms. As students, you need to view the restrictions posed by the pandemic as a temporary deterrent. Your focus should be to gain the competencies to conduct application oriented research in order to evolve as useful citizens of our society.
Our university boasts of faculty with a high degree of knowledge and commitment to offer the best in teaching and research. Given the context of the pandemic, we need to redefine our teaching-learning processes to offer the best pedagogic experience to our students. Similarly, the post-pandemic era demands that we hone the employment potential and entrepreneurial capacity of our learners. This necessitates that we focus on sponsored research in cutting edge areas.
Our administrative staff have been the backbone of the university. While we move towards a transparent and complete e-governance model, we need more support from you. When the teaching-learning process at our university – from admission to certification -- is moving into the digital era, your skills and competencies need to keep pace.
At our university, we are gearing up for the final round of NAAC re-accreditation. This has offered us an opportunity to assess our Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Challenges. Further, it has made us more determined to reiterate our quality benchmarks in teaching, research and extension activities. We are aware of this responsibility and fully prepared for it because, our university has always encouraged individual thinking within the established frameworks. This is echoed in the words of Tim Burners Lee, who initiated the World Wide Web: “We are forming cells within a global brain and we are excited that we might start to think collectively. What becomes of us still hangs crucially on how we think individually.” Let us unite to make the educational experience at the University of Madras a synergy of the best minds and best thoughts.
