Kiran Mazumdar Shaw of Biocon will be conferred an honorary doctorate by the Deakin University of Australia on Tuesday, announced the university's chancellor, John Stanhope, in New Delhi on Monday.
Stanhope, along with Prof. Jane den Hollander, the vice chancellor; Prof. Julie Owens, the deputy vice-chancellor, research; and Ravneet Pawha, the CEO (South Asia), was in Delhi to celebrate 25 years of the Deakin University's collaborative works in India. Stanhope said the doctorate was in recognition of Shaw's innovative work in the field of healthcare.
The week-long celebration of Deakin in India will see them move to some of the campuses with which they are collaborating in research. These include TERI, AIIMS, IIT-Madras, ISB Hyderabad and PGI Chandigarh. The university is also doing collaborative research with the Indian Oil Corporation and Reliance Industries.
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In an interaction with the media, the vice chancellor revealed that the National Skill Development Corporation of India (NSDC) is assessing the impact of the skills imparted by it, using big data analytics, in collaboration with the Deakin University.
Prof. Hollander said the impact study was a two-year project and as of now, a work in progress. She said the work was being done at the university lab in Australia, and the results would be known next year.
Talking of skills development, Stanhope said soft skills were hard to teach. Much of these, he said, pertained to project management, problem solving and communicating effectively. At Deakin, they were focussed on preparing job ready people for “jobs of the future”, wherein it would be important to focus on globalisation at a time when countries were getting nationalistic, and to contribute to the community everywhere. Among the sectors they named were health care and sports management.
The Deakin University team announced the launch of their very first online education programme for Indian students—a graduate certificate programme in hospital administration. Prof. Owens said it was to upskill those who are already in the line, and enable them to run the next generation of health system. “This will aim to help them keep pace with the enormous changes in the Indian hospitals,” she elaborated.
Asked what it would take to build world class universities in India, the vice-chancellor responded with how the 44-year-old university had made it to the top 10 in Australia. “The Australian government sends performance indicators when giving public grants. These are measurable outcomes, and the work can be repeated. It is a sustainable model. And we at Deakin believe that the vision for future and the jobs of future have to be our focus. That makes a difference, and we will make a difference to the future of the community.”
