Page 17 - UNNAT BHARAT ABHIYAN

16 Fostering Social Responsibility & Community Engagement in Higher Education Institutions in India

Students at Gandhigram Rural Institute practising Awareness through Nukkad Natak by NSS volunteers in
‘Shramdaan’ http://www.ruraluniv.ac.in/ village Khara Madana
BestPractices?content=Shramdhan http://www.thenewsnow.co.in/newsdet.aspx?q=56096

Students from Azim Premji University interacting with Panchayat
members https://azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/SitePages/students-life-
students-reflections-4.aspx
2.3 Offering new courses
Effective engagement between local communities and HEIs calls for dynamic revision of
curriculum and introduction of new courses. Therefore, HEIs need to design and introduce
new courses at undergraduate and post-graduate levels which foster social responsibility and
enable community engagement. For instance, new courses for engineering students may
be designed focusing exclusively on water harvesting, storage, security and distribution;
management programmes may design a new course on logistic & business planning for
sustainable 24x7 water supplies to rural habitations, etc. Courses on solid and liquid waste
management, design of new toilets, and low-cost housing materials are all examples of such
new courses which enable community engagement by students. To tap local knowledge,
new courses can enable systematisation of local community knowledge (like folk medicine
for treatment of household animals).

Such courses can be audited by students, or taken as a part of 25% provision for external
(to faculty) courses now allowed by UGC guidelines. These can be short-term certificate
courses, or integrated into the existing syllabus. By their very nature, such courses are
trans-disciplinary and require community engagement activities by students. Additionally,