08/06/2016
LAKSHMANGARH (Rajasthan, India): Mody University, a leading women’s university in India, is opening up its doors to international students including Indian Americans beginning this fall.
“This year, we plan to enroll students from the United States, Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia, among other parts of the world,” said Dr. Jagdish Luthra, the dean of the university’s College of Arts, Science and Humanities, told The American Bazaar. “With India emerging as a potential alternative education destination for the students across the globe, Mody University has positioned itself as a school that provides world-class, quality education deeply rooted in Indian ethos.”
Dr. Luthra, a former professor of physics at Dartmouth College and University of Alabama, said the university plans to admit at least 50 students from the United States in the next academic year, which begins in July.
Mody University offers undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees in engineering, management, arts, science, architecture, fashion-designing and law.
The university has started receiving applications for both undergraduate and post-graduate programs for the 2016-2017 academic year, according to its website.
Founded in 1998, by the Rajasthani industrialist and philanthropist R.P. Mody, the six colleges of the university — College of Arts, Science and Humanities, College of Architecture and Design, College of Engineering and Technology, College of Fashion Design and Merchandising, College of Law and Governance, College of Business Management, Economics and Commerce — have graduated more than 10,000 students so far.
University officials believe that a curriculum that consists of multi-discipline courses with inter-disciplinary options, world-class facilities and a stellar campus will succeed in attracting Indian Americans and students from other Indian diaspora communities worldwide.
Dr. Luthra said that students who grew up in the United States and other western countries would find Mody University the ideal place to pursue higher education because of its extremely favorable student faculty ratio of 12:1, its world-class academic infrastructure and state-of-the-art laboratories, a safe environment and an emphasis on spirituality and tradition.
Compared to the US universities, the cost of a degree is also much less, he added. According to the university, the annual fee — including the full residential costs — for an international student would come to roughly $10,000.
Besides regular degree programs, the university also has other short-term courses and internships targeting international students.
Beginning last year, it started offering internships and study-abroad programs for international students. The internships are open to male students as well.
The university has also designed a special certificate/diploma program called “Spiritual India:Science of Human Possibilities. “We are going to have discourses running on several aspects of spirituality, not just Hinduism,” Dr. Amit Mukherjee, who heads the program, said. “We are going to talk about the mind, we are going to talk about philosophy, the ails of the present civilization, and how we plan to cope up with that.”
Even though Mody University is a residential university, students are also allowed to live outside the campus.
The sprawling 265-acre campus in Lakshmangarh, which is roughly 85 miles to the north of the Rajasthani capital of Jaipur and 170 miles to the west of Delhi, is modeled on universities in the west, with its aesthetically designed buildings and a lush green and environmentally friendly campus.
“Being in a desert, we have scarcity of water,” Dr. Luthra said. “We get water from tube wells which are 500 feet to 1,000 feet deep, and we preserve every drop of water that we use. Water goes through its cycles, then it is treated and we use the last cycle to water the plants.”
The campus atmosphere is also distinctly Indian, and spiritual. Various areas, sections and buildings are named after popular Indian lakes, rivers and mountains.
Tapovan, which consists of a yagna-shala, a meditation hall and a temple spread over 8 acres, is at the center of Mody University’s spiritual life. Yagnas are held every morning at dawn.
Classes are also offered in Indian spirituality, including in Sanskrit and Vedic astrology.
Dr. Luthra said Mody University has partnerships with a number of US universities, including Florida International, Stony Brook and University of North Texas. It also has strong alliances with the industry, which has led to placements of graduates in top Indian and global companies such as Infosys, Accenture, Ericsson, IBM, TCS, Wipro, Deutsche Bank, Citi Financial, ICICI, Motorola, Nokia, Siemens Networks, ST Microsystems and Texas Instruments.
The campus is also home to Mody School, an elite residential school, which has classes from Grade 3 to 12, and is affiliated to the CBSE, New Delhi, and IB Diploma Program, Geneva, Switzerland, for Grades 11 and 12.
