Communication gaps hit MSU

VADODARA, SEPT 14: In July, the departmental head of the Faculty of Science went out of station for three days. He informed his dean and ...

VADODARA, SEPT 14:

In July, the departmental head of the Faculty of Science went out of station for three days. He informed his dean and the university office that an in-charge had to be appointed. But by the time the official letter, with the university stamp and the requisite signatures, came through, the head had returned.

In August, an Arts faculty department spent several days without an in-charge following similar confusion over who was to take charge in the head8217;s absence. As in the Science faculty the month before, by the time the official communique came through, the head was back in his seat.

More recently, the Faculty of Commerce needed to contact a guest lecturer at the Department of Marketing. Since the phone was out of order, the lecture could not be confirmed.

Trivial as these instances might seem, they are all too common in M S University. And though they concern the administration, the impact was absorbed by the academia and the students.

At the Faculty of Science, for instance, important decisions were kept on hold for the three days the department concerned was without a head. At the Arts faculty, the absence of an in-charge caused the department to lose out on a books grant, while at the Commerce faculty, the students had to do without the scheduled class.

Cutting across faculty boundaries, communication glitches virtually hold the university to ransom on any given day. Says Dean of the Faculty of Social Work Anil Navle, 8220;Till recently, we didn8217;t have a fax. To contact corporate guest lecturers, we had to depend on the phone. If that proved difficult, we had to send a peon.8221;

D H Mohite, head of the Department of Political Science, suggests that if not all, the faculties that run professional courses be given the basic fax facilities. 8220;The Arts faculty has so many departments. Since not all heads can be contacted on the fax 8212; some don8217;t even have phones 8212; a decision taken by the dean often cannot be communicated to everyone.8221;

Department heads say they often get to know about meetings after they8217;ve been held. 8220;We miss out on such meetings since we can8217;t be informed about them8221;, says the head of a department of the Arts faculty.

Interestingly, the few faculties that boast of a fax machine have all benefited from either the largesse of alumni or funds from the University Grants Commission or agencies like the Ford Foundation. Though Senate members have represented the need for basic facilities to the university administration, not much has been done to meet the demand. Vice-Chancellor Anil Kane says a proposal has been made to accommodate the costs in the budget. They can also be met through the annual development fee collected from students.