AP, NUS to have student exchange programs

Hyderabad, Sept 28 (INN): In a 7-member delegation led by Minister Ganta Srinivasa Rao and officials of the Higher Education Department, the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Higher Education Department have agreed in-principle for a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in areas of student exchange, training programmes for faculty and consultancy-based research.

The government delegation interacted with top brass officers of the NUS, under the leadership of Prof. Tan Eng Chye, Deputy President Academic Affairs and provost.

Secretary (Higher Education) Sumita Dawra presented the status of higher educaton in AP and elaborated on the vision of the state government to develop Andhra Pradesh into a global hub for knowledge and education.

Ongoing foreign collaborations of Higher education were discussed and expectations from NUS in academic, research areas were outlined.

The Minister, HRD welcomed NUS to explore different areas of interaction between Singapore and Andhra Pradesh in (i) joint degree programmes, (ii) establishing a school of Public Policy, (iii) helping reposition Andhra University in top few Universities in the world.

On Singapore side Ms Aileen Bong presented the profile of NUS and projected foreign engagements and success stories of University, while Prof Tan EngChye presented the strong research potential of NUS.

Both the parties have exchanged their areas of success and collaboration expectations.

The team has also interacted with Institute of System Sciences (NUS-ISS) and NUS Business School. Ongoing programmes for executive education and faculty up-gradation were also discussed at length.

The interaction resulted in discussions on mutual benefits as well as new practices of internationalizing higher educations. Practice-based Teacher-Learning Philosophy and Flagship Programme of NUS seem to be viable programmes the AP can offer.

Both the teams will interact further to explore crystallization of ideas for making higher education more relevant in the direction of attaining quality and collaborating with industry in a more fruitful manner.

In the evening, the team interacted with various Singapore based digital education companies, which are keen to expand and setup startup Incubation towers at Visakhapatnam.

The seven member team includes Prof. L. Venugopala Reddy, Chairman, Prof. P. Vijaya Prakash, Vice Chairman, Sumita Dawra, Secretary, Higher Education, B. Udayalakshmi, Commissioner Collegiate and Technical Education, Prof. G.S.N. Raju, Vice Chancellor, Andhra University, K. Lakshminarayan, Director, Skill Development Corporation and Prof. MHM. Krishna Prasad, Nodal Officer, JNTUK.