Bhubaneswar: Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan will inaugurate the Pushpagiri Lecture Hall Complex and Rushikulya Hall of Residence at IIT Bhubaneswar at 9 am tomorrow (Aug 20).
Speaking before the event, Prof Raja Kumar, Director said, “Hon’ble Minister of Education has always been very supportive, visited the campus on numerous occasions and we are all encouraged and feel privileged to have him gracing the campus physically and spending some time interacting with the faculty staff and students”.
Government of India so far sanctioned the amount of Rs. 1,260 Crores for the creation of the institute infrastructure in two phases. As part of the infrastructure, the institute is creating a modern lecture hall complex at the cost of Rs. 148 Crore with the floor area of 26,354 Square Meters.
The present Lecture Hall Complex comprises of three buildings, with facilities for,
- 60 seater lecture halls: 40
- 120 seater halls: 20
- 240 seaters: 4
In future as the institute grows further, another three buildings can be added to complete the lecture hall complex that has circular formation. The first of the buildings is now ready for operation which will be put into use. A part of the complex under construction now is a mini-complex comprising of 10 flipped class rooms. The Rushikulya hall of residence is an 800-sinle seated hostel with extremely good atmosphere. The institute says that the campus buildings including hostels are built in extremely good standards at par with internationals standards.
The Director added, “the lecture halls are designed to be of new age and serve as e-classrooms wherein live streaming of lectures with interaction can be done with lecture recording facility and can be used for conventional classes. The lecture halls are designed to work with air-conditioning as well as natural ventilation during the winter months. The lecture halls provide electrical connections for charging of laptops, internet access through WiFi, document visualizers for board work, apart from white boards, CCTV surveillance etc. The central atrium of each of the building has a lot of interactive space for students. The complex is designed to have a huge interactive space around the buildings. The flipped class room complex is one of the foremost in the country and it can be used for conventional lectures, group tasks / individual work comprising of study/browsing, design, analysis, problem solving, assignment, interacting with teacher”.
The Director further said, “We named the lecture hall complex taking inspiration from the historical Pushpagiri university which thrived with students coming from other countries in this very land, as long back as in the first few centuries AD. Rushikulya hall has been named considering the local river Rushikulya whose mouth place is famous Olive Ridley nesting.”
