Archive for the ‘Yale University’ Category
Indo-US coop in education field poised for major expansion
India-US cooperation in the field of education is poised for major expansion, Indian envoy to the US said ahead of the next week’s major summit between the two countries on the issue. “India-US cooperation in the field of education is today poised for major expansion,” Nirupama Rao, Indian Ambassador to the US said while addressing at the Yale University on “Future Direction in India-US relations”.
“We in India see education as critical for achieving its goals to have inclusive growth and to realise the potential for taking the Indian economy to even higher growth trajectory,” she said. The Ambassador said that India has announced major initiatives for massive expansion and upgradation of the education infrastructure, both in the primary education sector and also in the higher education.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and India’s Human Resource Minister Kapil Sibal would attend the India-US Higher Education Summit on October 13. “The Summit will bring together not just government officials but also academics and entrepreneurs who are engaged in this area and will provide a platform to develop a blueprint for furthering our horizons in this area,” Rao said.
Yale, she said, has had a historical connection with India that goes back more than three centuries beginning with Eliahu Yale and his days in Madras (now Chennai). Yale has been a pioneer among the US universities when it comes to the study of India – its languages, literature, religions, history, and its politics, economics and society.
“I understand Yale was the first US University to start teaching Sanskrit. Many eminent Indians and Indian-Americans have passed through its portals. Yale is today not only continuing its tradition of engagement but has strengthened it and extensively broadened it through the Yale India Initiative that was launched in 2008,” she said.
India-US relationship she said is a partnership that seeks to meet common aspirations for mutual prosperity and for peace and security.
Source: The Times of India (Online Edition), October 5, 2011
Yale University turns Indian MPs into students
It will be a different gathering of Indian Parliamentarians with no marshals to throw out unruly lawmakers and no zero hour to show their lung power. The Speaker will be replaced by professors and the MPs will sit in the classroom taking notes and quiz, at a mock Indian Parliament being organised by America’s prestigious Yale University.
The 2011 cohort of 13 Indian lawmakers will be present at the the New Haven campus of Yale University in Connecticut on June 16 to participate in a six-day leadership programme. The event will be complemented by a three-day programme of meetings, discussions, and interactions in New York City.
Among the notable 2011 participants are Sachin Pilot, Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology; Manish Tewari, the official spokesperson for the All-India Congress Committee; and Rajiv Pratap Rudy, the official spokesperson for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Global political-economic affairs and the challenges of leadership are the focus of the 5th India – Yale Parliamentary Leadership Programme to be held June 16 to 25.
Yale University, widely recognised for educating leaders in government, business, and civil society worldwide, launched the India-Yale Parliamentary Leadership Programme in 2007, in collaboration with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the India-US Forum of Parliamentarians.
The earlier India-Yale Parliamentary Leadership Programs were held in October 2007, June 2008, June 2009, and June 2010 respectively, with different delegations of Indian parliamentarians. In total, more than 60 members of India’s parliament will have participated since the programme was created five years ago.
The participation of the most visible spokespersons for the government and opposition underscores the programme’s emphasis on fostering discussion and dialogue across party lines. The 2011 participants are drawn from seven different political parties.
Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), June 13, 2011
>Two Indians selected as Yale World Fellows
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Two Indians — Monika Halan and Sonali Kochhar — have been selected for the prestigious Yale World Fellows, which is Yale University’s signature global leadership development initiative.
Monika Halan is editor of Mint Money, India’s second-largest business newspaper, which has an exclusive partnership with the Wall Street Journal. She is a media personality who is well known for her financial expertise. A medical doctor and clinical researcher, Sonali Kochhar is Medical Director, India, Institute for OneWorld Health. She leads efforts to develop safe, affordable, and accessible drugs and vaccines for diseases prevalent in the developing world, including HIV/AIDS. She previously served as the medical director for the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.
In all 16 talented individuals have been selected for World Fellows for 2011. This year’s World Fellows include an executive at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange; a director at the World Economic Forum; the director of the World Health Organization’s tuberculosis control program in China; a policymaker in Afghanistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and the executive director of Greenpeace Brazil.
“We received more than twice as many nominations this year than ever before, evidence of the growing reputation and global awareness of this unique opportunity for leadership development,” said the Program’s Director Michael Cappello, Professor of Pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine. “The 2011 fellows were carefully selected from an incredibly deep and talented pool of international leaders. We are delighted to welcome them to Yale this fall,” Capppello said.
This year’s cohort brings the total number of Yale World Fellows to 171, representing 77 countries. “I am thrilled and humbled,” said Gavin Sheppard, a 2011 World Fellow and innovative cultural entrepreneur from Canada who uses art and music as tools for youth inclusion, capacity building, safer cities, and economic growth.
From August to December, the 2011 World Fellows will enroll in a specially designed seminar taught by leading Yale faculty; audit any of the 3,000 courses offered at the University; participate in weekly dinners with distinguished guest speakers; receive individualized skill-building training; and meet with US and foreign leaders.
Past World Fellows have met with then-UN secretary general Kofi Annan, World Trade Organization director-general Pascal Lamy, Supreme Court justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, among others.
The Yale World Fellows Program has at its core three main goals: to provide advanced training to emerging leaders from diverse disciplines and countries, to link this network of world leaders to each other and to Yale, and to expand and deepen international understanding at Yale.
Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), April 27, 2011
India will do well to learn the U.S. vocational education model
“India is a developing country with a developed talent” — that’s what Jack Welch, then chief executive of General Electric Co. (GE), said a decade ago. That sentiment is behind education emerging as one of the key areas of collaboration between the U.S. and India.
Yale, a favourite among Indian institutes, signed an agreement on October 28, 2010 with the Indian Institute of Management-Kozhikode (IIM-K), and the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur (IIT-K), for an academic leadership programme under the “Obama- Singh 21st Century Knowledge Initiative.”
Richard Levin, President of the three-century-old university, also met Indian CEOs in Mumbai to boost Yale’s India-centric academic programmes back home. Illinois interim Chancellor Robert A. Easter met Sibal and has shown interest in partnering with an innovation university on bio-science and biotechnology and agriculture. India proposes to open 14 innovation universities, which are research-oriented campuses that will enjoy a high degree of autonomy.
These developments strengthen the idea that Indian higher education is getting globalized. According to Sam Pitroda, Adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on innovation and infrastructure, Indian education is passing through a phase similar to that of the Indian economy in 1990s: It’s time to “deregulate education” and push ahead with the reform agenda, he says.
The Indian economy, expanding at around 8% a year, needs a large, trained workforce to sustain the growth momentum. It will need to step up research and development (R&D) and innovation, which generally emerge from educational institutions, an area where India needs to catch up with the rest of the world. According to official statistics, India has 157 researchers per million people compared with 633 in China and 4,526 in the U.S.
Collaboration with the U.S. should bring about a research orientation in Indian universities and other top institutions. “Asia is rising in the 21st century both as an economic power-house and an intellectual hub. Higher education in India is on a reform path and it’s essential for India to maintain its economic growth,” Yale President Levin said, adding that his university wants strong ties with the country. “The top Indian institutes have to become research-oriented while keeping their teaching excellence intact.”
Debashis Chatterjee, Director of IIM-Kozhikode, said that education follows disparate themes in India and the U.S. — value for many and value for money, respectively. “These two models have existed for long separately,” he said. “But what we require is co-existence. While India has talent, the U.S. has money to invest on them for a greater good.” He says the U.S. can get more bang for its buck in terms of investment in research and innovation. “The Indo-U.S. relation is a win-win proposition in higher education,” he says.
The U.S. has a good record on vocational education, which is something India can benefit from as the country faces a major dearth of skilled manpower. According to the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) and human resources firm Ma Foi Randstad, less than 20% of the workforce that enters the labour market every year in India is skilled.
“India has a huge young population and the economy is growing fast. This (India) is the right place to invest in now,” said Narayanan Ramaswamy, Executive Director (Education) at consulting firm KPMG. “They want (to be in) India as the country will be the hub of human capital for the world. You will see more partnerships.”
Last month, Cincinnati announced US$ 1 million toward scholarships for Indian students gaining admission in the September 2011 session. Further, Ratan Tata and Anand Mahindra have donated a total US$ 60 million ($ 50 million and $ 10 million, respectively) to Harvard University. The move came after their companies have taken significant steps in expanding their global footprint. “Reliance, Tata and Infosys are global brands now. You cannot ignore them,” Levin said.
This also comes at a time when India has moved draft legislation in Parliament to allow foreign institutions to set up campuses in the country and provide independent degrees. Sibal, who has initiated a number of education reforms in the last 16 months, sees this benefiting Indian students.
Apart from students getting a quality education, the Bill will create a sense of competition among foreign and Indian institutions on quality, research and student satisfaction. At any given point of time, over 100,000 Indians are studying in the U.S. Last year, a little over 32,000 Indians got student visas to the U.S., and it is expected that the government will discussing raising this number during Obama’s visit.
Source: Mint, November 5, 2010
Yale to bring global best practices here
Yale University on Thursday signed an agreement with two of India’s leading institutions, the Indian Institute of Management-Kozhikode (IIM-K) and the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur (IIT-K), to develop training programmes that will create academic leadership here. The programmes will be aimed at vice chancellors, deans and heads of various educational institutes, and will be facilitated through the setting up of Centres of Excellence for Academic Leadership (CEALs).
A series of workshops and training programmes will kickoff from January 2011, the funds for which will be channelled from the Obama-Singh 21st Century Knowledge Initiative which has a corpus of US$ 10 million in combined funding . The initiative was launched in November 2009 to create better ties between universities in India and the U.S.
Yale University will help shape the curriculum for the training, besides providing technical and research support, and even staff. As per the agreement, the implementation of activities and the newer areas of collaboration will be decided by a management committee comprising two members representing each partner. “Education is becoming more globalised every day. Local universities need to be exposed to global best practices to grow,” said George Joseph, Assistant Secretary, Yale University. The Ivy League university has already been conducting similar programmes for academia in China.
Source: The Economic Times, October 29, 2010
Yale University signs MoU with IIT-Kanpur and IIM-Kozhikode
Indian Institute of Management-Kozhikode (IIM-K), Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur (IIT-K) and Yale University, U.S. have entered into a partnership to advance higher education in India through academic leadership development programmes for higher education leaders in India and through research on Indian higher education.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in this regard was signed between Dr. Richard Levin, President of Yale University, Dr. Debashis Chatterjee, Director of IIM-K, and Dr. Sanjay Dhande, Director of IIT-K in the presence of Union Minister for Human Resource Development (HRD) Kapil Sibal and Minister of State for HRD D. Purandeswari.
Speaking on the occasion, Kapil Sibal said that this partnership, which will take effect from January 2011, will be sited in two new Centers of Excellence for Academic Leadership (CEAL) to be established at IIM-K and IIT-K. “The partnership will begin with a term of five years, and could be renewed thereafter,” he added. He also said that a six member committee with equal participation from the three partnering institutes will determine the norms/qualifications for participating in these leadership programmes.
The flagship programme of the partnership will be a new “India-Yale University Leadership Programme,” to be developed by Yale University in consultation with IIM-K and IIT-K, that will expose university and academic leaders in India at the levels of vice-chancellor, director, and deans to the best practices of academic administration and institutional management in the United States.
Yale University, IIM-K, and IIT-K would also engage in joint faculty research on higher education and collaborate to organize workshops and seminars on relevant areas of academic administration and leadership. The first programmes under the agreement would take place in 2011 in New Haven, Connecticut.
Yale President Richard Levin stated, “Yale is pleased to undertake this important and much needed effort on higher education with IIM-Kozhikode and IIT-Kanpur. We look forward to working with them to advance the cause of higher education in India by sharing what we have learned over three centuries as an institution and we similarly look forward to learning from our partners in India in this age of global education.”
Source: Press Information Bureau, Government of India, October 28, 2010
IIMs to raise funds Yale University style
The elite Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), which largely rely on government support, may soon raise money from their alumni. On Wednesday, the IIMs will discuss the report of a government-appointed panel that outlines the need for professional fund-raising by setting up dedicated offices and appointing experts, two officials of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) said.
The committee has suggested an initial plan for the four oldest IIMs — at Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Bangalore and Lucknow — to raise Rs. 400 crore (Rs. 4 billion) from their alumni. The plan follows Yale University’s fund-raising model, under which the institutes will identify prospective fund givers, solicit money from them and keep them informed about how it is being used.
“The committee has given its report and has some forward-looking proposals. It will be discussed at the IIMs’ meeting, chaired by HRD minister Kapil Sibal,” one of the officials said. “The proposal for raising an initial Rs. 400 crore by four IIMs over a period of three years is an achievable target, looking at the wide alumni base of these institutes.”
The committee which was set up by the MHRD, is headed by Hari S. Bhartia, Chairman of the Board of Governors of IIM-Raipur and Co- Chariman of Jubilant Life Sciences Ltd. Bharat Gulia, Manager – Education at audit and consultancy firm Ernst and Young, said the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have been successful at pooling resources from alumni. “These B-schools have not done so. Their students are in good positions worldwide and it would be great to leverage it,” he said. “IIMs are looking for greater financial autonomy and this is a positive step.” He added that unless professionals are hired, the fund-raising effort won’t succeed.
The second MHRD official said IIMs are gradually becoming global brands, and raising funds professionally to fuel their growth is an important step for them. “A growing brand like IIM cannot entirely depend on government money. This effort suggested by the committee is one of the alternative ways to become financially robust,” the official said. Both officials declined to be named.
The Bhartia Committee has proposed that, like Yale University, the four IIMs should reach out to former students who can contribute by making presentations and inviting them on campus for further interaction. Those who cannot spare the time should be given the option of donating through telephone or Internet banking. They should also be allowed to donate in cash and kind, another model followed by Yale.
Besides the four schools mentioned in the report, India has six more IIMs at Indore, Kozhikode, Shillong, Rohtak, Ranchi and Raipur. While the older IIMs receive Rs. 20 crore (Rs. 200 million) a year from the government, the new ones at Rohtak, Ranchi and Raipur will receive Rs. 400 crore each over the next eight years.
“This is just the beginning. We have submitted the report, and a final decision will be taken on Wednesday by the HRD minister,” said a member of the Bhartia Committee, also requesting anonymity. Besides government funding, IIMs also raise some money through executive programmes and consultancy. The Wednesday meeting, to be attended by the Directors and Chairpersons of all IIMs, will also discuss governance, curricula and branding of IIMs.
Source: Mint, October 13, 2010
Yale offers to mentor 14 ‘innovation universities’
Yale University is in talks with the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) to develop leadership programmes to mentor the 14 “innovation universities” the government is planning to set up. The “innovation universities” are part of the MHRD’s “brain gain” policy to attract global talent. Fourteen such institutions are to be set up under the Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007-12). Several other leading foreign universities, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), have also expressed an interest in mentoring these institutions. An official confirmed the ministry met these institutes almost two weeks ago to discuss these plans.
Yale’s talks with the MHRD involve mentoring all 14 universities through its leadership programme. Since none of these universities have been built, the Ivy League university’s role is to act as consultant and conceptualiser. “Minister Sibal has agreed to work with us on the new innovation universities for references and conceptualising. We will be developing leadership programmes for the deans and vice chancellors of these universities,” said George Joseph, assistant secretary, Yale University. “We don’t plan to set up an India campus anytime soon because there is no way to replicate Yale’s experience anywhere in the world but we would like to mentor the new innovation universities just like the Indian Institutes of Technology were mentored when they were established,” he added.
Each “innovation university” is expected to focus on one area or problem of significance to India, such as urbanisation, environmental sustainability and public health. MIT has expressed interest in mentoring one university that is focused on the energy sector. “Though MIT’s proposal is still under discussion, the university has shown keen interest in this,” a ministry official confirmed.
Meanwhile, Yale also plans to use part of the funds from its Yale India initiative for the leadership programme for these new universities. The initiative began in November 2008 and now has almost $75 million (Rs. 338 crore). “In the next phase of the initiative, we will raise funds for research,” Joseph added.
Source: Business Standard, March 22, 2010
Yale offers to mentor 14 ‘innovation universities’
Yale University is in talks with the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) to develop leadership programmes to mentor the 14 “innovation universities” the government is planning to set up. The “innovation universities” are part of the MHRD’s “brain gain” policy to attract global talent. Fourteen such institutions are to be set up under the Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007-12). Several other leading foreign universities, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), have also expressed an interest in mentoring these institutions. An official confirmed the ministry met these institutes almost two weeks ago to discuss these plans.
Yale’s talks with the MHRD involve mentoring all 14 universities through its leadership programme. Since none of these universities have been built, the Ivy League university’s role is to act as consultant and conceptualiser. “Minister Sibal has agreed to work with us on the new innovation universities for references and conceptualising. We will be developing leadership programmes for the deans and vice chancellors of these universities,” said George Joseph, assistant secretary, Yale University. “We don’t plan to set up an India campus anytime soon because there is no way to replicate Yale’s experience anywhere in the world but we would like to mentor the new innovation universities just like the Indian Institutes of Technology were mentored when they were established,” he added.
Each “innovation university” is expected to focus on one area or problem of significance to India, such as urbanisation, environmental sustainability and public health. MIT has expressed interest in mentoring one university that is focused on the energy sector. “Though MIT’s proposal is still under discussion, the university has shown keen interest in this,” a ministry official confirmed.
Meanwhile, Yale also plans to use part of the funds from its Yale India initiative for the leadership programme for these new universities. The initiative began in November 2008 and now has almost $75 million (Rs. 338 crore). “In the next phase of the initiative, we will raise funds for research,” Joseph added.
Source: Business Standard, March 22, 2010
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