How four-year graduation with focus on research helps

 How four-year graduation with focus on research helps

After the four-year research, students can take direct admission in PhD

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c-Puniti.Pandey@timesgroup.com

31.01.2022

With the introduction of the four-year research programme in the National Education Policy 2020 students now have an option to choose between the four years and the five-year master's degree.

“The four-year research programme provides more options to the students as they can notonly takeup highereducation abroad but also explore more careeropportunities,” says Manoj Sinha, principal, Aryabhatta College, University of Delhi.

As per the NEP 2020, the students will be awarded a degree of an honours in the discipline with research if they complete the four-year programme in Sciences, Arts or Commerce. The students will be required to complete a thesis or an interns-hip in their final year to complete the research programme.

To provide in-depth knowledge in a subject to create more knowledgeable professionals, Shiv Nadar University is launching academic specialisations to their existing BSc (Research) degree in Chemistry. In the new academic year, the students will have the option to choose from Chemical Biology, Computational Chemistry, Materials Chemistry.

“We admit students from all the Chemistry streamsPCM (Physics-Chemistry-Mathematics) or PCB (Physics-Chemistry-Biology. Since the BSc students were already aligning themselves with an elective that would offer specialisation in a subject, we have now laun-ched a full-time specialisation course. The specialisation programmes willprovide anoption to all our students to enhance their knowledge and understanding,” says Parthapratim Munshi, professor and head, Department of Chemistry, School ofNatural Sciences,Shiv Nadar University, Delhi-NCR.

The programme will initially focus on students acquiring foundation and introductory modules. From the second year onwards, the students will opt for specialisations, which will be introduced by hierarchical additions of modules.

The course structure of the programme includes Chemical Principles, Basic Organic Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, Physical Methods in Chemistry, Molecular modelling, Chemical Equilibrium, Electrochemistry, Coordination Chemistry, Chemical Binding, Molecular Spectroscopy, Heterocyclic Chemistry among others.

Highlighting the benefits of four-year research programme over the master's degree, he adds, “ The four-year research programme allows students to have additional capabilities through industry exposure. At the end of the four-year programme, many students come up with co-authored research papers for publishing. Also, many of our four year research programme students have performed better than the 3+2 master degree students. At the Green and Sustainable Chemistry Conference held at IIT Kanpur in 2019, students with the research programme fared better than the students with the master's degree. ”