Sri Satya Sundar Tripathi, Hon’ble Chancellor, KISS-DU met Professors Emeriti to exchange ideas on the prospective academic planning of the University at an interactive meet held on 9th December 2021. At the outset, Professor Deepak Kumar Behera, Vice-Chancellor, apprised the Chancellor of the innovative academic efforts made by the institute over the past several months to improve its pedagogic qualities.
Speaking to the distinguished audience, Sri Tripathi quoted Alvin Toffler’s famous statement, “The illiterate of the future are not those who can’t read or write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn”, to alert them of the intellectual challenges of the 21st century, particularly in the context of an institution as KISS. Besides being an expert in domain knowledge, one also needs to be imaginative and creative to look around for opportunities to put into effect innovative ideas, he stated.
How to re-invent an institution while retaining the soul of what it is can be a challenge in respect of KISS. How to create pedagogic situations that facilitate cross-fertilization of ideas should perhaps be the goal of KISS. Sri Tripathy remarked that this institution that looks after 30,000 tribal children is still at a sub-optimal level of providing services. How to build up and nurture the tribal students in such a way that they do not become self-conscious, alienated and even judgmental while dealing with their own people who are not educated like them is yet another challenge we have to face. It is important to create job opportunities for the students. Sri Tripathy mentioned opportunities for logistics jobs at the warehouses that have been coming up in India. He also insisted on developing the entrepreneurial skills of the students.
In response to the speech of the Chancellor, the Professors Emeriti – many of them acting and former Vice-Chancellors, academicians and senior professors – offered suggestions such as promoting tribal artisanry and handicrafts, making the students employable, teaching the students in the mother-tongue based multilingual mode, equipping the students with the skill of adaptability and build up their self-confidence, hone their communicative skills, among others.
Sri Tripathi commended the distinguished academics for their invaluable suggestions and concluded the interaction with his remarks that social transformation to achieve an equitable order will not yield results overnight, given thousands of years of deprivation and exploitation certain sections of people (the SCs and STs) have undergone, or different forms of domination women have suffered at the hands of men. KISS will surely be an agent of information.
He also suggested that the school syllabus should incorporate experiential and affective components as well as life skills in the syllabus, and KISS should serve the passed-out students with an extended support system. At the very end, he called upon the senior Emeritus Professors to act as mentors to not only the research scholars but also their supervisors, given the vast knowledge and experience in their respective fields of knowledge.
Dr. Kanhu Charan Mahali, Director-General KISS-DU, also spoke on the occasion. The Interactive Meet ended with a vote of thanks by Dr. Prashanta Kumar Routray, Registrar, KISS-DU, who appealed to the distinguished gathering to visit the KISS website and familiarize themselves with the entire spectrum of programmes and activities of KISS Foundation for a more informed understanding of the institute.
