STATE TIMES NEWS
NEW DELHI: The University Grants Commission (UGC) reached out to Indian scholars working in overseas teaching and research institutions by offering them faculty positions in scientific disciplines under its faculty recharge programme. The recent appointments of 102 newly recruited faculty was released by the Minister for Human Resource Development (HRD), Smriti Zubin Irani. The candidates selected have to their credit rich contributions in critical areas of research in the domain of physics, mathematical sciences, chemical sciences, biological sciences, engineering sciences and earth sciences. A significant facet of this exercise relate to the number of successful women candidates (23 per cent) and overseas candidates (45 per cent). The present initiative is in conformity with the vision of the HRD to promote the concept of ‘Teach in India’.
The Faculty Recharge Programme envisages recruitment at national level of highly motivated faculty working overseas, with flair for research in inter-disciplinary and frontier areas of Science through a dynamic interactive web portal and advertisement in principal national dailies and in reputed international journals. It envisages 1,000 faculty to be inducted over a period of 5 years.
This initiative is going to give a fillip to quality teaching and research in the university system, both Central and State, at a time when we have severe shortage of teaching faculty.
The programme provides a vehicle to plough back talent, as a reversal of brain drain, into the country in the hope that they will bring into our higher education system a rich culture of new thoughts and ideas for cross fertilization of the same in our system. The programme has the potential of meeting with shortage of faculty in critical areas besides providing motivation to ‘Teach in India’ with their experience overseas.
