What would you call a person who, at 84 years of age, readily packs his bags and travels to any place within India to teach and train educators in experimental physics? Would you not say he is dedication personified? The person in question is Prof. R Srinivasan, a retired IIT-Madras professor, and this course is part of the endeavours of the three science academies of India to boost the teaching and learning of science in the country. Any institution which wishes to conduct this training programme for its research and postgraduate students and faculty members needs to apply with an investment of Rs. 50,000, the remaining cost (which could amount to Rs. 7 lakh) is borne by the academies. What is more, at the end of the course, the academies gift the institution a standard kit costing Rs. 70,000, which can be used to demonstrate several of the experiments when needed.
In this effort, two boxes of equipment are needed. These have travelled to several states such as Jammu, Kerala, Gujarat and the Northeastern Hill States, to name a few. “Each set has travelled more than 20,000 km by road, and the equipment still function. I go two days in advance and set up the experiment (nearly 25), and spot test them. After the course, I supervise the repacking of the equipment, to be forwarded to the next venue,” says Prof. Srinivasan. This two-week-long refresher course in experimental physics is only one of seven different courses, including theoretical physics, chemistry, life sciences, math, engineering and earth and planetary science (EPS); although, having been conducted 74 times since its inception in the year 2000, it stands out among all the courses.
STUMBLING BLOCKBut while Prof. Srinivasan is happy that more than 125 institutions, including IISERs IITs Central and State universities and autonomous colleges are using these experimental setups, he confesses that the programmes have received no support from the University Grants Commission.
“We requested that 20 of the nearly 200 Academic Staff Colleges may be asked to conduct one refresher course using our kit, and we offered to train the faculty. This was referred to a meeting of Directors of Academic Staff Colleges held in Puducherry,” says Prof. Srinivasan. The request was rejected as the directors felt that the experiments were elementary. “Actually our experiments are advanced and only a few experiments are being done with outdated equipment. Their [UGC] approach was very disappointing…,” he adds.
It must be noted at this juncture that Prof. Srinivasan’s work in experimental physics has set a blazing record.
Among other things, the earliest and most successful experiments in India on high-temperature superconductors were carried out in his lab, at IIT Madras, in the 1980s. It is not surprising that in the fifteen years of existence of the course, he has trained 1920 people in experimental study. Karnataka shows the maximum number of courses (22) and Bihar the lowest (0).
OTHER PROGRAMMESThese courses owe their existence to a study carried out by the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bengaluru, in 1994, on the state of science education in the universities.
Based on the recommendations made in this study and financial support from the Department of Science and Technology, the academy embarked on four projects: starting a journal Resonance and three activities to support science education, namely, refresher courses that would each last two weeks; two-to-three day long lecture workshops and summer research fellowships for students and teachers. Of these, the journal and the summer research fellowships have turned out to be hugely successful.
The selected student or teacher is assigned to a guide with whom he or she may work and carry out a research project for any two months during the year. The plan supports travel and accommodation expenses of the candidate.
It is so successful that some students even go on to publish papers on the work they do in the two months! One person who has been with this programme, driving it from the start, is Prof. N. Mukunda, C. V. Raman Professor at the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi.
Further details of the course can be obtained from the website of the Indian Academy of Sciences, www.ias.ac.in.
BOOMING APPLICATIONSHaving started with just three students in 1995, this programme today supports over 1,700 students and 300 teachers every year. Though they were started by the Indian Academy of Sciences, the other two science academies — the Indian National Science Academy and the National Science Academy of India — joined forces with the IASc. In 2007, the three academies set up the joint Science Education Panel. With this, the number of applications for the flagship programme, the Summer Research Fellowship, rose to 15,000 in 2012.
With about 600 Fellows of the academies available to guide the students, the number needed was around 2,000. So, the academies co-opted research scientists who were not necessarily Fellows, but were recommended by other Fellows, to guide students for the Summer Research Fellowships. Apart from this, there are about a hundred lecture workshops held every year. “We get two to three requests every week,” says Prof. Mukunda.
Prof. K.L. Sebastian, of Department of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry, Indian Institute of Science, is the chairperson of the Joint Science Education Panel now. He is also very enthusiastic about the lecture workshops, and concerned that these are not as evenly distributed across the country as he would like them to be. This asymmetry arises mainly because the initiative falls on the individual colleges to submit a proposal, and for them to do that, colleges need to be aware of such programmes. “Whenever we get a request from a remote place, we always support it. But if even that proposal is not there, what can we do?” asks Prof. Sebastian.
