Mysuru: Goverdhan Mehta, eminent scientist and former director of Indian Institute os Science, Bengaluru and National Research Professor at School of Chemistry, University of Hyderabad urged Governor and Chancellor Vajubhai Rudabhai Vala to encourage all the universities in the state to continually recharge their academic offering and scholarly reservoir.
He was delivering 95th annual convocation address of University of Mysore (UoM) here on Friday. Mehta said concurrently, safeguarding the autonomy of universities and protecting them from any political and bureaucratic meddling is needed. At the same time, it is necessary that the universities are seen as deserving, transparent, responsibility, accountable, empowering their faculty to innovate the teaching learning processes and provide best learning choices to the students, he added.
Further, he said according to a study indicates that success in life is determined only 20% by disciplinary or domain knowledge and the rest comes from attitudes, aspirations and soft-skills. He believed that the academic ambience of UoM has provided ample opportunity to strike a better balance between disciplinary learnings and soft skills, particularly essential life skills.
He urged young graduates to make a great career, scale new professional heights and accomplish and also asked to make sure they climb high on the social responsibility and human sensitivity scale.
Meanwhile, he said research and teaching are to be considered as conjoined twins that must defy separation. Every teacher in university must cultivate a research idea, make a bid for competitive merit based research funding and supervise doctoral research. To facilitate this, every institution must create an enabling environment in terms of research infrastructure and information resources, he added.
Mehta said on this graduation day, your primary concern, like that of most young individuals, is understandably employment and the governments and industry are trying to maximise it. But, there are limits to it. On the other hand, explorations through creative instincts like art, music, sports, photography, writing etc and individual entrepreneurial fervour are unlimited. Cultivate an impulse to innovate, to address myriad real world problems. Follow the example of a great innovators like Thomas Edison, Shubham Banerjee, a small boy who invented world’s cheapest, affordable Braille printer.
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. ‘Be leaders not followers, be employers and not employees, be wealth creators and not mere consumers,’ he quoted.
This year girls outshines boys at the convocation. 16,259 women candidates i.e. about 57%, out of 28,580 candidates conferred with different degrees. With 12,321, 43%, men received degrees.
In addition, 396 candidates, including 133 women candidates, received PhD degrees in various subjects. Total of 318 gold medals and 172 cash prizes were shared among 202 candidates in five faculties.
Marking the 95th Convocation of the University of Mysore, the Syndicate of the University of Mysore conferred honorary Doctorates on novelist Dr. S.L. Bhyrappa, industrialist Azim Premji and film personality Nagathihalli Chandrashekar. However, Premji was absent on the occasion.
