Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute

Shastri News - January 2010

Meet our latest Student Excellence Award winners

This year the Shastri Institute has presented five outstanding students with Student Excellence Awards, for their work on India-related topics. These students have demonstrated great initiative in pursuing studies or carriers related to India and they will be using their awards to help achieve those goals. Thank you to all of the excellent students who applied. Read profiles of some of our 2009-2010 winners:

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Remembering Professor Nanda Kumar Choudhry

It is with sadness but with many fond memories that we say goodbye to our friend and past President, Professor N. K. Choudhry, who passed away peacefully on December 30, 2009. Dr. Choudhry’s involvement with the Institute includes a year as the Director of the Delhi office from 1977-78, two years as the Institute’s President from 1982-84 and many years as a researcher engaged in multiple projects.

Continue reading for more details on how to contribute to a special student award being held in Dr. Choudhry’s name this year.

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Sneak-peak at our vision for 2010-2015

At the end of 2009, the Shastri Institute’s Executive Council approved a new five year vision for the Institute. This vision document will be presented to the Members Councils to be ratified in June. For a preview of some of the initiatives you can plan to see developing, please click here.

In its 40 year history, the Shastri Institute has witnessed significant progress in the engagement between academic institutions in Canada and India. We have been privileged to take part in these developments on many levels over the years. Today there are many new stakeholders, more variety in our membership and more opportunity for engagement than ever before.

Our vision for the future is to both broaden and focus our services so that we can meet the needs of our members and our nations and enable them to build greater linkages in the years to come.

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Access to Indian News in Canada

Are you satisfied with the quality and quantity of India-related news that is currently available in Canada? How important is it to you to have access to India-related news? The Shastri Institute is considering providing a service in Canada to make it easier for Canadians to access quality news on India. If you are currently living in Canada, please click on the link below to access a brief questionnaire that will help us determine how Canadians feel about this topic. If there is a need that we can fill, your input will also help us determine exactly what kind of service we should be providing to meet that need.

Questionnaire on Indian news in Canada

Want to know more about this initiative? Listen to an interview with our President, Dr. Sheila Embleton on CBC Radio’s Masala Canada with Wojtek Gwiazda

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AUCC releases “good practices” guidebook on recruiting Indian students

The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada recently released a guidebook for Canadian institutions on Indian student recruitment. The guidebook provides numerous recommendations on how to effectively plan and navigate through the recruitment process. Case studies of five Canadian universities constitute the main component of AUCC’s research. The good practices in this guidebook are informed by the overarching reality that Canadian institutions are generally not well known in India. Institutions need to be prepared to invest a considerable amount of resources at all levels of recruitment to be successful. AUCC’s guidebook is available free of charge and can be downloaded here.

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Goodbye to another good friend

The Shastri Institute wishes to express our deepest sympathies to the family, friends, colleagues and students of the late Jeanne Wolfe.

Jeanne, a former Director and Professor Emeritus of the School of Urban Planning at McGill University, passed away on December 20, 2009, after a battle with cancer.

Jeanne’s exceptional contributions to Urban Planning are visible in Canada and around the world.

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Schulich MBA in India begins inaugural year

York University’s Schulich School of Business, has launched an exciting new initiative that is giving MBA candidates the opportunity to earn their degree while studying both in Canada and India. The Schulich MBA in India program began its inaugural year just weeks ago with its first class of 25 Indian students.

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Pilot project doubles acceptance rate for Indian students at Canadian colleges

A new partnership programme between Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) and the Association of Canadian Community Colleges (ACCC) has succeeded in doubling the acceptance rate for Indian Students at a group of twenty Canadian colleges this year. Launched in April 2009, the Student Partners Program met and surpassed all of its goals during its pilot phase and will likely expand to include more colleges in the future.

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Questionnaire for Canadian Studies Scholars

The International Council for Canadian Studies (ICCS) is disseminating a questionnaire to Canadian Studies Scholars around the world and they urgently need input from scholars in India. We encourage Indian scholars to complete the questionnaire. Please register by clicking on the first or second link below (second link is in French). Once you have registered and obtained log-in information, you can click on one of the next two links to access the questionnaire. If you have any questions please let us know.

Registration: English | French

Questionnaire: English | French

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Changes at the Institute’s Calgary office

In January, the Shastri Institute bid a fond farewell to our Executive Director, James Liebenberg. James has moved on to pursue other interests and we wish him all the best in his future endeavours.

We would also like to officially welcome Sarah Hawkins as the Acting Executive Director of the Institute. Sarah has been an integral part of the Shastri team for several years in her role as Communications Officer, and will continue to serve the Institute wholeheartedly during the interim period.

We will be starting our search for a new Executive Director in the following months. Any interested and qualified candidates should continue to check our website for details on how to apply.

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New Publications

Indian Higher Education: Envisioning the Future
by: Pawan Agarwal
Sage Publications © 2009

From the website:
INDIA has seen a consistently high rate of economic growth in the recent years. It has now become a major player in the global knowledge economy. Skill-based activities have made significant contribution to this growth. Such activities depend on the large pool of qualified manpower that is fed by its large higher education system. It is now widely accepted that higher education has been critical to India’s emergence in the global knowledge economy. Yet, it is believed that a crisis is plaguing the Indian higher education system. While, the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) set up by the Prime Minister calls it a ‘quiet crisis’, the Human Resource Minister calls higher education ‘a sick child’. Industries routinely point towards huge skill shortages and are of the opinion that growth momentum may not be sustained unless the problem of skill shortages is addressed.

Kabitia Chakraborty, Canadian Studies Research Fellow, has recently published an article based on her PhD research:

Chakraborty, Kabita. 2009. The good Muslim girl: conducting qualitative participatory research to understand the lives of young Muslim women in the bustees of Kolkata , Children’s Geographies 7, 4 : 421-434

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