With IoE status, MAHE has to do things differently: VC

MANIPAL: "Having acquired the "Institute of Eminence" status, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal plans to start three new campuses in the next two years. One in Bengaluru, another in Jamshedpur and the third in Sri Lanka." This was disclosed by Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal vice chancellor Dr H Vinod Bhat at the function held to celebrate the great occasion, on Tuesday.

Dedicating the big achievement to the founder Dr TMA Pai and MAHE chancellor, Dr Ramdas M Pai, Dr Bhat spoke of the difficult times Dr TMA Pai went through and the hardships which Dr Ramdas Pai endured to see the University grow into what it is today. "They have overcome tough times and I'd like to dedicate this accomplishment to them," he said.

"MHRD's special status to MAHE is a recognition of all what has been done in the past and acknowledgement of the potential to become a globally ranked University in the future. He congratulated the Manipal fraternity - faculty, students, non-teaching staff, administrators and all. "There is so much to do now," he said. Research, academic excellence, new initiatives, embracing technology has to be something different than what we have done so far. Strengthening internal quality assurance to be led by the quality and compliance team.

Director Quality and Compliance, Dr Sandeep Shenoy presented all the procedures that were followed to get the eminence status. He said that the University under the leadership of the Vice Chancellor, Dr Bhat worked tirelessly for this status. "From the time that the Finance Minister, Arun Jaitely made an announcement in his Budget speech about the Centre's plan to have institutes of eminence in the country, we have been working on it," said Dr Shenoy.

The MHRD provided the guidelines for all those universities who wished to apply for the status. Initially the government was to pick ten institutes from the public sector and 10 from the private with the potential to be among the top 500 in the world rankings in 10 years, eventually making it to top 100. When the announcement was made on July 9, 2018 only six were given the status of eminence, three each from the private and public sectors. MAHE was one of the three in the private sector.

Dr Sandeep added: "We had certain guidelines to follow while submitting our application within a specific period of time. We designed and developed the documents as per the MHRD requirements and submitted a voluminous document which ran close to 26,000 pages. It contained all the strategic future plans of growth for the University on way to becoming a world class University".

The pro chancellor, Dr H S Ballal in his presidential address, acknowledge Dr Bhat's leadership qualities and spoke of the way in which he led his team to this height. Dr Bhat earned loud round of applause for that.