As part of celebrations for the National Education Day, Amity Academic Staff College (AASC), Amity University Haryana (AUH) organized a one-day Panel Discussion on “Reimagine Higher Education for Accelerated Learning Outcomes & Impactful R&D”. All distinguished Vice Chancellors and Pro Vice Chancellors of various Amity Universities in India participated to deliberate the issue.

Delivering the Words of Wisdom, Hon’ble Chancellor, Dr.Aseem Chauhan,(AUH), spoke on the celebration of National Education Day as the day to resolute to become better teacher, better student, and a better person. Dr. Aseem Chauhan highlighted that Amity Universities are not only credited with many Patents but also commercialize the Patents. Dr. Chauhan mentioned that the New Education Policy, based on pillars of quality and accessibility to educationist a great initiative by the government. According to Dr Chauhan, “Curriculum of Higher education should be designed in such a matter that the students have the choice to study what they are really interested in.” He emphasized that Amity Group have already implemented the choice-based credit system, that has now been proposed in the NEP 2020.Dr Chauhan also stressed on the need to collaborate with various universities for creation of a credit pool and doing the Research and Development in a responsible and impactful manner. Dr. Chauhan further laid stress on use of online teaching modes to reach out to maximum number of students, even internationally. He asked stakeholders to think deeply about how innovative technologies can be used to reach out to many more students so that the Gross Enrolment Ratio rises in the country.

Delivering the Welcome Address, Prof.(Dr) P.B. Sharma, Hon’ble Vice Chancellor, AUH, spoke about the need to create a compassionate world, full of harmony, peace, compassion, and human values. “The current purpose of Education is such that everyone is running after prosperity and career advancement,” opined Dr. Sharma.“In the post-covid era, we are to re-imagine education that creates prosperity and happiness together to live a life full of bliss. The purpose of education must be rediscovered to serve the cause of sustainability as also to create a just and responsible society, added Dr. P. B. Sharma.

The Keynote address was delivered by Dr. W. Selvamurthy, President of Amity Science, Technology and Innovation Foundation. According to him, “Problem solving, innovation and creativity should be encouraged in the education system”. We should concentrate on how to re-imagine India as a knowledge superpower and also as an economic power. Universities in India must be shaped as the cradle of innovation. Quality research must be encouraged along with publication of quality papers. We need to increasingly focus on transnationalities of research and patenting of Intellectual Property alongside with commercialization of IPR. We are blessed with young creative manpower and a huge pool of brilliant young scholars, who can be channelized to create India into a knowledge hub.

Prof. Manoj Kumar Dhar, Hon’ble Vice Chancellor, Jammu University, was the Guest of Honour of the event, Prof. Dhar talked about NEP 2020 that has laid a great emphasis on increased access equity, accountability, and quality of Higher Education. “Keeping in mind that India is having a demographic dividend with young population and millions of students, high quality education should be made available to around 140 million youth, who are aspiring for University Education in India.” According to Prof. Dhar, aim should be to provide good guidance to students after schooling, so that they are able to make great career choices. The University education should create responsible citizens, to have financial capabilities to lead a quality of life. We have to imagine future challenges, and accordingly effect changes in the curriculum. Students should not be thrust with courses and rigid curriculum, rather there should be designer courses, with inputs from various curriculums like Humanities, Engineering,Science, Management etc. to prepare the students for future,” said Prof.Dhar.

Prof. Dhar further added that the future job markets must be identified to make courses and skills relevant for the industry. “Designer courses will be able to develop students along with their interest area and make them relevant to the Industries,” said Prof Dhar. He reminisced how our ancient universities like Takshila and Nalanda were teaching multi-disciplinary courses, including 64 Arts (kalas), which made them integrate with the rhythms and the vibrations of nature, as the soft skills, which should be re-introduced into the Indian Higher Education System.

The first panel discussion on “Higher Education Curriculum Design & Delivery Innovation” was chaired by Prof. (Dr) Balvinder Shukla, Hon’ble Vice Chancellor, AUUP and Co-Chaired by Prof. (Dr) Padmakali Banerjee, Pro Vice Chancellor, AUH. According to Prof. Padmakali Banerjee, Education imported by heart brings revolution in the society. “Dr. Abul Kalam Azad, who was the first Education Minister of India created pathways for internationalization of education, who contributed towards the promotion of women’s education and universalization of education in India” said Prof. Banerjee.

Prof. Balvinder Shukla, AUUP, in her opening remarks opined that we need to revisit the attributes of University Graduates with post COVID-19 era to impart knowledge that shall prepare them for life and research that shall strengthen the Nation’s economy and meet the needs of solving the global problems.

The panellists for this session included Prof.(Dr) Amit Jain, Pro Vice Chancellor, Amity University Rajasthan, Prof. (Dr) M.P. Kaushik, Pro Vice Chancellor, Amity University Gwalior, Prof. (Dr) Ankita Chakravarty, ProVice Chancellor, Amity University Kolkata, Prof. (Dr) Sunil Dhaneshwar, Pro Vice Chancellor, Amity University Lucknow and Prof. (Dr) Vivekanand Pandey, ProVice Chancellor, Amity University Patna.

The second panel discussion on “Accelerating Impactful Research, Innovations & Start-ups” was Chaired by Prof. Rakesh Bhatnagar, Hon’ble Vice Chancellor, Amity University Rajasthan and Co-Chaired by Prof. P. B. Sharma, Hon’ble Vice Chancellor, AUH. Other panellists included Prof. R.K. Pandey, Hon’ble Vice Chancellor, Amity University Chhattisgarh, Prof. Sanjay K. Singh, Hon’ble Vice Chancellor, Amity University Kolkata, Prof. Ravinder K. Kohli, Hon’ble Vice Chancellor, Amity University, Mohali, Prof. Raman K. Jha, Hon’ble Vice Chancellor, Amity University Jharkhand, Prof. T.R. Venkatesh, Hon’ble Vice Chancellor, Amity University Patna, Dr. Rajiv Sharma, Director General, Vice President • Department: AFSTIA & RBEF, AUUP. Closing Address was given by Hon’ble Vice Chancellor, Prof. (Dr) P. B. Sharma, where he encouraged for providing support to enterprising minds for accelerating impactful R&D and urged to create the island of Research in India.

As part of the inaugural session, Dr. Sanjna Vij, Program Director, AASC, AUH, gave an introduction on the program and walked through the schedule for the event. Dr Vij emphasized that all the major concerns and challenges in Higher Education such as: industry-oriented curriculum, ICT based teaching-learning, accelerated outcome-based teaching, impactful research projects, employability and collaboration need to be addressed on priority to make Indian universities function at par with global universities. The Vote of Thanks was delivered by Rear Admiral Kishan K. Pandey (Retd.), AVSM, VSM, Director HR &AASC, AUH.

Approximately 700 participants including Deans, Heads of Institutions, Faculty Members, Research Scholars and Students from various Amity Universities attended the Webinar.