12 luminaries to visit GU as Visiting Professors
GOANEWS DESK, PANAJI | 03 July 2013 16:39 ISTDr Maria Aurora Couto addressing the media
Goa University is throwing open a unique Visiting Research Professors Programme, not only for the university students, but other college students as well as people in general.
Converting six Chairs started by Art and Culture Department in the name of well-known Goans into this ‘formally informal’ academic exercise, the Goa University is inviting 12 nationally and internationally renowned luminaries to the campus.
It includes historian Prof Romila Thapar, environmentalist Dr Madhav Gadgil and psychoanalyst and novelist Prof Sudhir Kakar for D D Kosambi Chair.
The Dayanand Bandodkar chair would invite economist Prof Amit Bhaduri, academician Prof Ashok Chandra and economist Lord Meghnad Desai.
Famous writer and musician Jeet Thayli would represent Bakibab Borkar Chair.
The Mario Miranda Chair would invite Prof Jyotindra Jain, Orijit Sengupta and Atul Dodiya – three eminent artists.
The Nana Shirgaonkar Chair will have famous vocalist Shubha Mudgal while Prof Santiago Lusardi Gierell of University of Spain will visit on behalf of the Anthony Gonsalves Chair.
All these luminaries would spend minimum six weeks in a year in Goa, for the next three years.
Goa University Vice Chancellor Dr Satish Shetye said the visiting professors would primarily conduct courses through lectures as well as other practical methods.
“But it need not be for the students from the same field but even other fields, in order to gain knowledge of other areas,” said Dr Shetye.
The university, after grading their performance by giving them credits, would give certificates for participation.
“I am a product of such an exercise carried out at Dharwar University during my student days and we want to formalize it through this programme so that interested people benefit from it”, said Dr Maria Aurora Couto, the chairman of the committee of all the six Chairs.
She is assisted by executive council member Dinar Bhatkar, Prof Y V Reddy, P F X de Lima as well as Ranjit Hoskote.
The visiting professors have different plans, states Dr Couto.
Dr Gadgil, in three years, is planning to come out with a book on “50 years of Goa’s environmental history” and also a bird and insect census on the university campus.
Prof Santiago, while teaching the history of western classical music, also plans to establish Goa University Choir, with their first performance next month.
Though Dr Gadgil has already paid one visit to Goa as a part of his Chair, the programme would be officially launched tomorrow with Prof Thapar’s lecture on “Contours in reading early Indian history.”