20/03/2021
IIT Jammu hosts the 1st International Conference on role of humanities in STEM higher education under the directives of NEP 2020 .
The Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Jammu organized the newly established department’s first-ever International Conference on Roadmap for Humanities and Social Sciences in STEM Higher Education. The two day conference was convened by Dr. Sayantan Mandal of the department at the institute campus. The International Conference brought together 42 speakers from more than 35 Higher Education Institutions hailing from 9 countries, such as the USA, Canada, Denmark, Philippines, France, Italy, and Poland. The conference saw a whopping participation of more than 260 people which is quite an achievement for a conference organized in online mode. Participants from reputed institutions such as the IITs and IIMs, University of Jammu, Central University of Jammu, University of Kashmir, MSU Baroda, JNU, Delhi University, University of Hyderabad, Azim Premji University, etc. attended the conference and raised interesting questions which kept the discussion lively.
The Director- IIT Jammu, Prof. Manoj S. Gaur was the patron of this conference who emphasized on the importance of Humanities and Social Sciences to develop well-rounded and humane citizens for the world today. Dr. Amitash Ojha, the Head of the HSS Department focused on the need to integrate the HSS subjects into the mainstream STEM curriculum and highlighted the efforts made by the HSS Department of IIT Jammu in this regard. Experienced Institutional leaders such as Prof. B.S. Sahay, Director IIM Jammu, and Prof. U.B Desai, founding Director, IIT Hyderabad also highlighted the practical issues, challenges, and hindrances in integrating humanities and social science subjects and pointed out that there is a need to change the existing compartmentalization of knowledge for the betterment of the society.
Prof. K. Ramchandran, Member of the Drafting Committee for the National Education Policy 2020, highlighted the importance of HSS in developing key skills, competencies that are needed for the 21st century and strongly recommended the departments of HSS across IITs, IIMs, and NITs to offer full-fledged education programs. Prof. Shyam B. Menon, Former Vice-Chancellor of Ambedkar University Delhi stressed on the lack of interaction between HSS and the Science and Technology departments. Prof. Ashoke K Sarkar, Dean, IIT Jammu, who was also the former Director of BITS Pilani emphasized the issue of cross-disciplinary interactions, while other speakers highlighted that irrespective of the growing interactions, several premier Higher Education Institutions, are still following a rather elitist approach.
Keynote Speakers, paper presenters, and participants highlighted the importance of inclusion, multidisciplinarity and referred them to the directives of the new National Education Policy, India 2020. The Policy clearly states the importance of HSS in STEM higher education and upholds the virtues of learning, cross-disciplinary competence development, and lifelong learning. At the same time, the success of the policy depends on its implementation. The Speakers were hopeful that accepting the complexities of the challenges and proper teaching strategies could lead to context-specific solutions and successful implementation of the NEP goals. International speakers, such as Prof. Stavros Moutsios and Roger Chao Jr. highlighted the importance of visionary leadership and academic freedom to implement the values inculcated by Humanities, Social Sciences, Liberal Arts at the institutional levels. The conference by the Department of HSS, IIT Jammu plans to bring out a detailed report and publish an edited book based on the selected papers presented during the two days. The conference was organized by faculty and scholars of the department coupled with the support of Institute’s Communication Officer, Ms. Akanksha Chauhan and the C3i team who helped with audio-visual support.
