The first meeting of the newly constituted Board of Governors (BOG) of IIITDM Jabalpur was held yesterday on February 7, 2005, Shri Sudeep Banerjee, IAS, Additional Secretary. MHRD is the Chairman of the Board. Chairman introduced all the members of the Board. They are Shri. .I. S. Dani, IAS, Secretary IT Education, Government of MP, Shri Ravi Mathur, IAS, Joint Secretary (Technical), MHRD, Prof .Sanjay G. Dhande, Director of IIT Kanpur, Dr. Pawan Goenka, Chief Operating Officer, Mahindra & Mahindra, Mumbai, Prof D.O. Koshy, Executive Director, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, Dr. Manoj Gaur, MD, Jai Prakash Associates Ltd & Director JIL Infotech, New Delhi and Mr. Ravi Jhunjhunwala, C&MD, HEG Ltd, Noida. A few members of the Board of Governors are yet to be nominated. The Board adopted that the name of the Institute shall be Pt.Dwarka Prasad Mishra Indian Institute of Information Technology, Design & Manufacturing, Jabalpur.

The vision of the Institute, as cleared by the Board, is to become an academic institute of excellence that would facilitate and promote a competitive advantage for Indian products in global market.

The mission of the Institute is to be a Global Center of excellence in Design and Manufacturing Education and Research in the country. The primary Goals of the new Institute are:

• To provide education and training , at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, to persons of outstanding abilities who would provide leadership to Indian industry in global competitive economic environment.
• To carry out advanced research and development activities in design and manufacturing technologies, both on its own and on sponsorship basis for the industry.
• It would provide distance learning and continuing education programs for faculty / scholars from other institutions and industry personnels.
• It would organize conferences, seminars and workshops and such other activities for the dissemination of knowledge industry.

These goals shall be achieved by offering undergraduate courses leading to B.Tech. Degree in (I) Computer Science & Engineering (ii) Electrical Engineering and (iii) Mechanical Engineering . At the postgraduate level there shall be specialization in creative design and engineering. The task of incubation of these programmes shall be under Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur . The Director , Faculty and staff of IIT Kanpur are working hard to achieve these goals. Admissions to the new undergraduate programmes shall be done through AIEEE. The first batch of students admitted in July –August 2005 shall be 20 each in the above three disciplines.

The curriculum of the above courses will be designed in consultation with industry partners in a way that allows a motivated student to pursue special areas and interests. The emphasis will be on synthesis, creativity, hand-on-experience, innovation, communication and entrepreneurship. Focussing more on “the training of how to learn” the curriculum would ensure holistic education and would also involve subjects like sociology, behavioural science, organization design, marketing strategy, linguistics, languages, business law and intellectual property etc. Such courses would be taught with the help of Adjunct Faculty.

In order to foster a spirit of innovation in the industry, a Design Studio Park will be co-located with the Institute. The academic library of the Institute will be Digital Library System.

The new campus of PDPM IIITDM Jabalpur will have a land area of 50 acres divided into three zones. Thirty acres of this land would be earmarked for academic activities while ten acres would be kept for the Design Studio Park to be developed with industrial partnership. Remaining ten acres would be the residential area and will have students hostels and the houses for the faculty and the staff. Till the campus is built, the activities of the PDPM IIITDM shall be managed from the Engineering College, Jabalpur.

The Foundation Stone Laying Ceremony of the PDPM IIITDM, Jabalpur will be done by Shri Arjun Singh, Union Minister for Human Resource Development on February 7. Shri Babu Lal Gaur, Chief Minister of MP shall preside over the function.