At Delhi’s Hindu College, a research centre for undergrads

According to principal Dr Anju Srivastava, the development of this facility is in response to a need felt to push inter-disciplinary research at the undergraduate level. “Within the existing undergraduate curriculum, there isn’t much space for research, but with students’ increasing curiosity levels and questioning capacities, and the rise of liberal arts, it becomes the responsibility of institutes to satisfy and enable students. For students, research will add to their credentials and also enable them to make an informed decision as to whether they want to continue or discontinue with the sciences after graduating…,” she said.

Research work to be carried out at the centre will be extra-curricular and not mandatory for students. The college does not have a journalism or mass media programme but the media lab is primarily in response to the ethnographic filmmaking course in the sociology honours programme.

“We are planning to also offer add-on courses in the future which will utilise the research centre, for instance journalism for women. Sociology department will primarily take charge of the media lab and the English, Hindi and Sanskrit departments will collaborate on the language lab, but this is purely administrative,” said Dr Shalini Suryanarayan, director of the college’s Internal Quality Assurance Cell.

The approximate cost of the project is Rs 7-8 crore for the infrastructure, and an additional Rs 2 crore for equipment. According to Dr Srivastava, the entire cost has been raised through “philanthropic donations”.