Odisha HRD

Vedanta University masterplan wins one of the 15 2008 Charter Awards of the Congress for the New Urbanism

Following is an excerpt from http://www.cnu.org/node/1875.

The Congress for the New Urbanism announces the recipients of its 2008 Charter Awards, the annual prize honoring the best of the New Urbanism. The 14 winning professional submissions and one student/faculty submission were chosen by a seven-member jury of leading urbanists last month, with Andrés Duany serving as chair. In fulfilling and advancing the principles of the Charter of the New Urbanism, the projects reveal the power of well-executed urbanism to strengthen communities, achieve broader sustainability and create places worthy of respect and admiration.

The awarded projects are found in the U.S. and four other countries: the Bahamas, India, Saudi Arabia, and Scotland. Among US regions, the Southeast again had a strong showing, followed by the Midwest. All but one of the awarded neighborhood- and block-scale projects in the USA are built or under construction, and none are on true greenfield sites. Several projects directly address quality affordable housing design, including one HOPE VI development from Chicago and a national pattern book for affordable houses. Several projects bring well-executed, innovative housing types to unexpected locations, like small Southern cities.

Duany and other jurors said winning projects demonstrated excellence, often in the face of difficult contexts or other challenges requiring ingenuity to overcome. The awards will be presented on April 5, 2008 in conjunction with the 16th Congress for the New Urbanism in Austin. See images and descriptions of all awardees.

Following are some details from the page http://www.cnu.org/node/1760.

Location: Orissa, India. University

Charter Award Winner:

In India today there is only one seat for every 10,000 university applicants, and those lucky enough to find a seat have limited choices of single disciplinary universities. To meet this unprecedented demand, the project’s design sought to create a multi-disciplinary University for 10,000 students.

As designers their aspiration was to create a campus master plan which would reflect not only the goals and philosophies of this new University, but would be Indian in spirit. The result of these intentions led to a simple ‘parti’ of two overlapping circles inscribed within an oval. The circles represent the balance between the two major areas of discipline, Arts & Humanities and Science & Technology. Intersecting these circles in a spoke are areas for housing and student life, and surrounding these forms are professional schools, a medical school, and hospital. At the core is a crescent open space which is the heart of the University, demonstrating a strong focus on the creation of a sustainable, pedestrian-oriented campus that fully embraces the principles of responsible development.

A total of approximately 500 buildings on 280 sites are identified within the university precinct to accommodate the anticipated student population, all of which will be no more than 5 stories, and have green roofs. Several localized sewer treatment plants will provide grey water for irrigation and toilet flushing and several utility pad sites for water storage, electrical transformers, pumps and cooling towers have been identified to maximize efficiency of utility services.

Transect Zone(s): T6 core.
Status: Plan Approved
Guiding Charter Principle(s): Principle 1, Principle 3, Principle 5, Principle 6, Principle 7, Principle 8
Project or Plan’s Scale: Region
Features: Affordable/subsidized housing, Civic buildings & parks, Green buildings, Live/work, Transit oriented development.
Land area (in acres): 8700
Total built area (in sq. ft.):
Total project cost (in local currency):
Retail area (in sq. ft.):
Office area (in sq. ft.):
Industrial area (in sq. ft.):
Number of hotel units:
Number of residential units (include live/work):
Civic uses (type and size): University, Townships, Exhibition Ground, Airport, Resort, Agricultural Research, Horticulture, Athletics & Sports Facilities, Utility Substations, Conference Center
Parks & green space (in acres): 440
Project team designers: Ayers/Saint/Gross Inc, Architects+Planners
Project team developers: Ayers/Saint/Gross Inc, Architects+Planners

Previous site status:

Starting/Ending date of construction/implementation: 2009 –

Location: Orissa, India.

February 24th, 2008

Expansion demand for Khallikote College: Samaja

February 22nd, 2008

KIIT entrance examination ad from Samaja

February 20th, 2008

Status of land acquisition for Vedanta University

Following is an excerpt from a report in Pioneer.

The State Government has so far been provided 1418.10 acre of land to the management of the upcoming Vedanta University near Puri. Out of this 264.27 acre are Government land and the rest 1153.83 acres of land are private land, said Revenue Minister Manmohan Samal.

In response to a question of BJD member Baidhar Mallick, Revenue Minister Samal said 1257 acres of land have been acquired from the 13 mouzas. "Government will acquire another 443.26 acre of government land and 4,288.37 acre of private lands for this purpose," he said. He further informed the House that 707.52 acre of lands and 5545.38 acres of private land private lands are there in the 18 mouza of this area.

February 20th, 2008

Tender for construction of housing complex for AIIMS like institute in Bhubaneswar

Latest from http://www.mohfw.nic.in/tenders.html (see also http://mohfw.nic.in/tenders.htm):

Tender for Construction of Housing complex for AIIMS like institutions under PMSSY at BHUBNESHWAR(ORISSA)

Some details about the tender:

• Release label: January 2008
• Tender number: HSCC//BU-/155 D/2008
• Estimated cost: 60 crores
• Completion period of work: 15 months
• Date of issue of tender document: 2/12/08 – 3/3/08 up to 1:00 PM
• Last date of submission at HSCC NOIDA office: 3/4/08 up to 3 PM; opening at 3 PM
• Bid security: 61 lakhs

Earlier links are at https://www.orissalinks.com/?p=749.

February 17th, 2008

New CBSE regional offices to open in Bhubaneswar and Patna: Dharitri

Currently the CBSE regional offices are in Chennai, Guwahati, Allahabad, Delhi, Ajmer and Panchkula (Harayana).

February 13th, 2008

Orissa cabinet approves 298.8 acres of free land for NISER

See http://tathya.in/story.asp?sno=1619.

February 13th, 2008

Vedanta University’s ad in Samaja

1 comment February 11th, 2008

Gurukula Institute of Technology’s ad in Samaja

It had earlier advertised in 2007. See https://www.orissalinks.com/?p=335. Perhaps it was not ready then. Lets hope it will start this year.

1 comment February 11th, 2008

National Council of Teacher Education; eastern regional office in Bhubaneswar

Following is from their page http://www.ncte-in.org/theintro.htm.

National Council of Teacher Education

AT A GLANCE

INTRODUCTION

The National Council for Teacher Education, in its previous status since 1973, was an advisory body for the Central and State Governments on all matters pertaining to teacher education, with its Secretariat in the Department of Teacher Education of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). Despite its commendable work in the academic fields, it could not perform essential regulatory functions, to ensure maintenance of standards in teacher education and preventing proliferation of substandard teacher education institutions. The National Policy on Education (NPE), 1986 and the Programme of Action thereunder, envisaged a National Council for Teacher Education with statutory status and necessary resources as a first step for overhauling the system of teacher education. The National Council for Teacher Education as a statutory body came into existence in pursuance of the National Council for Teacher Education Act, 1993 (No. 73 of 1993) on the 17th August,1995.

OBJECTIVE

The main objective of the NCTE is to achieve planned and coordinated development of the teacher education system throughout the country, the regulation and proper maintenance of Norms and Standards in the teacher education system and for matters connected therewith. The mandate given to the NCTE is very broad and covers the whole gamut of teacher education programmes including research and training of persons for equipping them to teach at pre-primary, primary, secondary and senior secondary stages in schools, and non-formal education, part-time education, adult education and distance (correspondence) education courses.

ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE

NCTE has its headquarder at New Delhi and four Regional Committees at Banglore, Bhopal, Bhubaneshwar and Jaipur to look after its statutory responsibilities. In order to enable the NCTE to perform the assigned functions including planned and co-ordinated development and initiating innovations in teacher education, the NCTE in Delhi as well as its four Reginal Committees have administrative and academic wings to deal respectively with finance, establishment and legal matters and with research, policy planning, monitoring, curriculum, innovations, co-ordination, library and documentation, inservice programmes. The NCTE Headquarters is headed by the Chairperson, while each Regional Committee is headed by a Regional Director.

30 comments February 10th, 2008

Adam Gross, design principal at the Baltimore architectural firm Ayers Saint Gross, discusses the design of Vedanta University in Maryland Radio

Adam Gross, design principal at the Baltimore architectural firm Ayers Saint Gross, discussed the design of Vedanta University with Tom Hall the Arts and Culture Contributor for Maryland Morning with Sheilah Kast and the host of Choral Arts Classics on January 25 2008.

• The mp3 recording of the broadcast (9 minutes, about 9 MB)

Some of the new details about the university that I learned from listening to this broadcast are as follows:

• 2:35: The construction is expected to start in Spring 2008.
• 2:39: First classes are supposed to start in 2009.
• 2:41: First phase they plan to have 3100 students and 400 faculty in next 2 years.
• 2:54: Second phase they plan to have 10,000 students and reach that milestone in another 5 years.
• 3:02: Third phase they plan to have 40,000 students.
• 3:04: In 25 years they plan to reach build out of 100,000 students.

February 10th, 2008

IMS Center for Communications Studies in Bhubaneswar

Following is an excerpt from a report in New Indian Express.

… leading coaching institute and publishing house IMS has come up with a ‘Centre for Communication Studies’ (CCS) here, the first in the country.

The centre will basically act as a finishing school, offering a wide range of classroom programmes to students and corporate executives to develop soft skills, hone business acumen and corporate etiquette.

According to IMS, picking the city over others was a logical step towards developing a pool of industry-ready workforce in a State bursting at its seams.

"The aim was to help more and more students profit from the upcoming opportunities generated by the industrialisation drive with confidence. Hence the move," said CCS director Subrata Dey.

The programmes have been prepared by a pool of IIT and IIM graduates and take strength from the unique methodologies followed to groom students. For example, in the ‘speak e’ class, seeking to develop English communication ability, a learner is ‘immersed into a simulated real-life situation with fellow students and trainers where he/she is encouraged to communicate according to the situation’s requirement.’

Besides, the candidate is placed in a group where others have a similar level of language skills for proper coaching. The other set of programmes from CCS stable include ‘the triple module placement training workshop,’ ‘powerprep’ and ‘propahgroom.’

While the former prepares a student face group discussion and get their basics right through interventions like ‘progressive interaction and argumentation,’ the latter two have been designed keeping the corporate professionals in mind. Interestingly, Dey said, several B-schools in the city have come forward to adopt them, especially ‘powerprep’ in their course curriculum.

It aims to develop the overall communication and report writing skills of participants and make him a true professional in power point presentation.

At present, the students are a mix of job seekers, management students and freshly recruited employees of corporate houses. IIT and IIM alumni would be on faculty.

7 comments February 7th, 2008

NRIs propose to set up three private medical colleges; Berhampur wants one: Dharitri

February 4th, 2008

Berhampur University partners with BARC on research: Dharitri

February 3rd, 2008

Is the proposal to convert “Institute of Material Sciences (IMS)” to “National Institute for Advanced Materials and Applications (NIAMA)” dead?

In 2005 our CM had proposed the central takeover/adoption of the Institute of Material Sciences (IMS) in Bhubaneswar (68/1, Laxmi Vihar, Bhubaneswar – 751005 )  to make it a National Institute for advanced materials and applications. In this, ex-IIT Khragpur director Prof. K. L. Chpora, a recent Padma shri award winner, was involved. But besides the following news report from 2005 nothing much has happened.

February 3rd, 2008

BJB College to Offer Four Professional Courses

Following is an excerpt from a New Indian Express report.

BHUBANESWAR: The golden jubilee celebration of BJB College could not have come at a better time. It has received the State Government’s nod to start as many as four self finance courses from the coming academic session.

The new courses would include a five year integrated MBA programme and a two year post graduate programme in journalism and mass communication.

The other two courses would be a five year integrated MSc programme in Bioinformatics and a five year integrated MSc programme in electronic and telecommunications. All the courses are high in demand in the present job market.

They would be offered in collaboration with Heritage Vision, an educational trust, said college principal B.N.Patnaik. While the MBA programme will have 60 seats, rest of the programmes would have 48 seats each.

Placement would be the last thing one should worry about as the institute has emerged as a sought-after hunting ground for multinationals looking for bright minds.

According to placement officer Prof Swetansu Sekhar Rath, Infosys, Vedanta, ICICI Prudential and energy and environment solution firm Phermax are next in line. They are slated to the visit the campus soon.

5 comments January 26th, 2008