IIT Roorkee director: NAAC accreditation for IITs a good thought, want more foreign campuses

Following IIT Roorkee’s improved performance in the NIRF Ranking 2025 overall category and its retained position in engineering, Director Kamal Kishore Pant shared with Careers360 the steps the institution has taken towards providing holistic education and research outreach. He also spoke about the institute's plans to open foreign campuses and advocated for accreditation of IITs, as discussed during the IIT Council meeting last month.

This year IIT Roorkee has improved its NIRF 2025 ranking in the overall as well as in the engineering category. What steps did the institute take?

We continued our work with dedication and have been continuously working to motivate the young generation to work with utmost sincerity. We are now training our students for the right kind of holistic development and to serve the society. We are in Uttarakhand, a state facing a lot of natural calamity. So we are making our students think about the society with the vision of being vocal for locals.

The state also has economic issues. So we have developed something called community connection where students devote their time in villages. They may have different backgrounds but they are learning on the ground.

Students have been spreading awareness among the women of the community about hygiene and motivating young children towards higher education. They teach them and bring them to IIT Roorkee. Earlier, students would move out from the state but we are working towards something called reverse migration and helping them become entrepreneurs. Our focus is – IITians should be job creators and be able to do something for the society.

Our institute currently supports more than 240 startups. We are doing research on defence, space science, earthquake management, disaster mitigation and several others. We have five departments working on water. We are also working on building sustainable energy. We now have a centre for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science and have started minor programmes as well. The faculty has started inculcating AI in their pedagogy. We are also working with farmers where we have built apps.

This is how students, through their knowledge of multidisciplinary approach, are working together and building products for the industry and society. Faculty are generating funds with research and even filing patents. If we keep on doing the good work, success will automatically come.

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The recently concluded IIT Council and even the ministry of education have been talking about NAAC accreditation for IITs. What are your thoughts?

It is a good thought. The accreditation is just one of the methods of faculty development and institutional improvement. We will invite members from other organisations and their suggestions can be included. Accreditation is just for the evolution of our own academic and research activities, including startup promotion.

However, accreditation is not just for getting numbers. The IIT Council has discussed that IITs can be either accredited and not accredited, with level 3,4, 5 designated for institutions like ours. For IITs, another system would be developed [within NAAC] that will consider factors beyond traditional metrics. This remains under discussion.

IITs have been building foreign campuses. Does IIT Roorkee have any plans?

We are working on it and are in touch with the Ministry of Education and Ministry of External Affairs. We have identified a couple of countries where IIT Roorkee’s strength can be utilised. One is Nepal, the other is Qatar where we can work on petroleum-related hydrology. It, however, depends on the ministry, but we do have plans.

But this apart, IIT Roorkee has been working towards internationalisation in a big way. We have an international centre for dam safety. We are looking towards rehabilitation of 40,000 dams where we have Japan’s support. We have a lot of international collaborations. We collaborate with a lot of German universities for water-related research. We also have collaboration with Nepal’s Tribhuvan University and want more internationalisation.

There are more than 300 international students on this campus. This year, 78 students have joined. This is the highest number of international students in any IIT. We want to create social and cultural balance.

In higher educational institutions and in IITs as well, suicide among students have been increasing. Your institution has already seen three suicides this year. How do you address this?

We are working on it. Through the Indian Knowledge System, we have introduced courses like the “Science of Happiness” and “Yoga for Better living”, which are proving beneficial.

Our wellness centre has trained psychologists, and faculty members maintain close connection with students. We have around 11,000 students and the problems being faced by PhD students are different from those of the UG students. Sometimes students also hesitate to meet the psychologist, so we have made it online also. It is kept entirely confidential.

Now every hostel also has student mentors who are wing-wise assigned. If a student is not coming out from the room, the mentor checks on them. For every 20 students there is one faculty member designated as mentor. We have 550 faculty members.

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Our student council also interacts with students. We have made it mandatory for every student to spend one hour on the ground. They can either play, walk or do any activity. We have started this with our first years. We even keep the activity centre and tinkering labs open at night for students.

We generally don’t consider attendance, but now we have started tracking it just to keep a tab on students. When extended absences are noticed, faculty or student mentors reach out to those individuals

What is the ratio of men and women in the campus?

Currently, women comprise 23% of our students and we are actively working to increase this percentage. We have special drives. To encourage PhD students we have started a scheme called Shakuntala. Under this programme, if a girl tops her institution, we interact with her directly. If found suitable, she is admitted without GATE or other entrances and we also provide them fellowships.

Through community connection as well we invite women students here and motivate them for higher education. We also mentor them.

We are hiring more and more women faculty. We currently have 17% women faculty, but it varies across departments.