GITAM gets autonomy

Visakhapatnam: The University Grants Commission has granted autonomy to GITAM Deemed to be University for maintaining high academic standards in higher education, informed GITAM Vice-Chancellor Prof MS Prasada Rao in a press conference here on Thursday.

The Vice-Chancellor said that as Category-I Deemed University and with the present Autonomy GITAM will have the freedom to hire foreign faculty, enrol foreign students, give incentive based emoluments to the faculty and enter into academic collaborations.

The university is also planning to start new courses, academic department and off-campus centres wherever necessary, he added. Out of 140 deemed universities only 11 universities conferred with autonomy status along with GITAM, Vice-Chancellor informed. Further he said that the graded autonomy status empowers GITAM to open research parks, incubation centres and university society linkage centres. He mentioned that the university is planning to start new courses like FinTech, Blockchain technology, Big Data Analytics, Cyber Security which are in high demand.

The V-C said that the autonomy will give lot of scope to GITAM to collaborate with renowned foreign universities in teaching and research. In this direction GITAM has recently signed a MoU with Saint-Petersburg State Marine Technical University, Russia to offer a dual-degree programme in Ship Building and Ship Power and automation systems. He briefed that Gandhi Institute of Technology and Management (GITAM) has three picturesque campuses at Visakhapatnam, Hyderabad and Bengaluru with 15 Institutes, 10 Faculties, 52 Departments and 10 Research Centres.

The University has been offering 190 UG, PG, Doctoral and others programmes in diverse disciplines such as Technology, Science, Pharmacy, Architecture, Management, International Business, Social Sciences, Languages, Law, Medicine, Nursing and Gandhian Studies. The Centre for Distance Learning, established in 2009, has been successfully offering 13 UG, PG and Diploma programmes in Literature, Management, Science and Social Sciences.

Prasada Rao said that 21,000 regular full-time students, 1200 research scholars and well over 80,000 students in distance mode hailing from almost all parts of the country. GITAM has emerged as one of the biggest deemed to be universities in the State of Andhra Pradesh and a premier educational institution in the country.

GITAM is accredited by NAAC with A+ Grade in 2017 and the UGC has accorded 12-B status to the Institution. It has also been accredited with ISO 9001:2015 for Quality Management, ISO 14001:2015 for Environmental Management and ISO 27001:2013 for Information Security Management.

The faculty members have undertaken major research projects with financial assistance from funding agencies such as UGC, DST, DBT, DAE, DRDO, CSIR, MoES and BARC. In addition, several research projects sponsored by industrial organisations/corporate houses like HPCL, NTPC, VSP, VPT, Dr Reddy’s Labs and other organisations are being implemented. Further, in order to facilitate advanced research in focused areas, 10 research centres have been established. So far, 16 patents have been awarded and another 52 patents are under different stages of processing.

The faculty members have also undertaken several consultancy assignments in government and non-governmental organisations. The University Pro Vice-Chancellor Prof K Sivaramakrishna, Registrar Prof M Potharaju, UGC Affairs Director Prof Ch Ramakrishna, GITAM Centre for Distance Learning Director Dr T Srinivas and others were present.