Education aimed at tapping the talent pool of scientists and entrepreneurs, internationally to encourage their engagement with the institutes of Higher Education in India so as to augment the country's existing academic resources, accelerate the pace of quality reform, and elevate India's scientific and technological capacity to global excellence. In order to garner the best international experience into our systems of education, enable interaction of students and faculty with the best academic and industry experts from all over the world and also share their experiences and expertise to motivate people to work on Indian problems, there is a need for a Scheme of International Summer and Winter Term. During the 'Retreat' of IITs with Minister of Human Resource Development Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani on 29th June, 2014 at Goa, it was decided that “A system of Guest Lectures by internationally and nationally renowned experts would be evolved along with a comprehensive Faculty Development Programme not only for new IITs, IIMs, IISERs but also other institutions in the country.
GIAN is envisaged to catalyse higher education institutions in the country, and that it will initially include all IITs, IIMs, Central Universities, IISc Bangalore, IISERs, NITs and IIITs subsequently cover good State Universities where the spinoff is vast. GIAN is an evolving scheme which will initially include participation of foreign faculty in Institutes as Distinguished / Adjunct / Visiting faculty / Professors of Practice, etc., to participate in delivering Short or Semester-long Courses. Other activities will be included in due course.
MHRD Scheme on International Summer/Winter Term (ISWT) under GIAN : The Minsitry of Human Resourses Development (MHRD), Government of India has approved a new program titled Global Initiative of Academic Networks (GIAN) in Higher Education. It envisaged achieving the following objectives:
- To increase the footfalls of reputed international faculty in the Indian academic institutes.
- Provide opportunity to our faculty to learn and share knowledge and teaching skills in cutting edge areas.
- To provide opportunity to our students to seek knowledge and experience from reputed International faculty.
- To create avenue for possible collaborative research with the international faculty.
- To increase participation and presence of international students in the academic Institutes.
- To create opportunity for the students of different Institutes/Universities to interact and learn subjects in niche areas through collaborative learning process.
- To provide opportunity for the technical persons from Indian Industry to improve understandings and update their knowledge in relevant areas.
- To motivate the best international experts in the world to work on problems related to India.
- Develop high quality course material in niche areas, both through video and print that can be used by a larger body of students and teachers.
- To document and develop new pedagogic methods in emerging topics of national and international interest.