Shastri News - July 2009 | Bulletins

Shastri News - July 2009

New Grants for Visiting Lecturers in Canada

The Shastri Institute is now accepting applications/nominations for three visiting lectureships to Canada. We invite our Canadian members to take advantage of these opportunities to bring world-renowned speakers to their lecture halls. All applications/nominations are due September 30, 2009.

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Friends of Shastri inducted into the Order of Canada

The Shastri Institute is pleased to congratulate two of its long-time friends and alumni for their recent inductions into the Order of Canada. The Order of Canada is the highest honor given to Canadian civilians recognizing a lifetime of outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to the nation.

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Private provisions necessary for future of world’s higher education

Like it or not, demand for higher education around the world is growing too rapidly for public institutions to sustain. This fact was made abundantly clear at the second World Conference on Higher Education which concluded July 8th in Paris. Two reports submitted to the conference reveal that private institutions now manage 30 per cent of the world’s higher education enrollment. In India, private institutions manage between 60 to 70 per cent.

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India’s big budget expansion in higher education focuses on science and technology

On Monday, July 6th, the Indian government announced that its budget plan for 2009-10 will include a 40 per cent increase for higher education, taking the higher education total to around $3.1 billion US. Significant beneficiaries of the extra funds include the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology and the National Institutes of Technology.

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University of Alberta and IIT Bombay form health and energy partnership

Professor Pradipta Banerji, former dean of International Relations at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, visited Edmonton during the first week of July to work out the details of a major partnership with the University of Alberta. The two schools will be collaborating on research into health and energy issues. Their three-year agreement involves joint conferences and workshops, joint research projects and a considerable amount of graduate student mobility.

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MSSO Silver Jubilee

“Many Indo-Canadians amongst us were born and raised in India. Our education in India was a major stepping-stone to our comfortable lifestyle in Canada. Back in 1984, a group of Indo-Canadians felt the need to repay India for its contribution to our lives. This is how MSSO came to be” ~Dr. Jagannath Wani

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Cancer care research programme gaining global perspective

“It is really important for our graduate students to be gaining global health competence in pressing cancer care issues,” explains Dr. Carmen Loiselle, the leader of a six-year old psychosocial oncology research training (PORT) programme in Canada. PORT trains promising graduate students to develop and test innovative, effective, accessible and patient-centred practices to significantly alleviate the burden of cancer on patients, family members, friends and caregivers. The programme recently received renewed funding for another six years through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

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U of S signs MoU with rural university in India

On July 23, 2009, Dr. Brett Fairbairn, Provost and Vice-President at the University of Saskatchewan, signed a memorandum of understanding with Dr. Gyanendra Singh, Vice Chancellor of a unique university in rural India that focuses its research and teaching mandate entirely on rural development. The partnership will be an excellent opportunity for Canadian faculty and students to work in rural areas in collaboration with a well-established Indian Institution.

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U of T launches programme to help foreign-trained lawyers

The University of Toronto recently announced its plans to launch a bridging programme for internationally trained lawyers seeking accreditation to practice law in Ontario. This programme, the first of its kind in Canada, joins other bridging programmes at the University of Toronto for professionals such as pharmacists, engineers and nurses. These programmes have proven instrumental in helping Canadian immigrants gain employment in their field of study.

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Space tourism – India’s next exciting venture?

Can the space tourism industry become commercially viable in India? A new bi-national team of researchers asks this important question as they conduct the first study on the subject of space tourism ever undertaken in or about India.