NIT Rourkela is going to have inaugural function for the Diamond Jubilee Year of the institute on 26th January 2021
Rourkela : National Institute of Technology, Rourkela is one of the country’s finest technical institutes continually maintaining an overall ranking in the top twenty institutions for technical education. NIT Rourkela has carved a niche for itself, its students and all its stakeholders in technical education. Stone by stone, NIT Rourkela has grown from a single building housing everything to a mega facility that supports more than 6000 people including students, faculty and staff and now entering 60th year of its existence. National Institute of Technology, Rourkela has one of the largest campuses in eastern India and has a huge infrastructure with strong academic base for research activity in different fields, including all the 20 academic disciplines.
NIT Rourkela was established as Regional Engineering College (REC) Rourkela on the 15th of August 1961. The institute’s campus is situated at the eastern end of Rourkela steel city, beyond Sector-1, over an area of 262 hectares of land provided by the visionary Chief Minister of Odisha, Biju Pattnaik. Its foundation stone was laid by the first Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. REC Rourkela was granted autonomy in 2002 and came to be known as NIT Rourkela since then. Now it functions independently under the Ministry of Human Resource Development (presently Ministry of Education) thus becoming one of the National Institutes of Technology.
Research is an integral part of the institution. In 2003 NIT Rourkela started SRICCE (Sponsored Research, Industrial Consultancy and Continuing Education) through which research activity of the Institute is administered. Today, SRICCE cell looks after the financial and administrative aspects of sponsored research, industrial consultancy, continuing education and testing & certification jobs. SRICCE is continuously administrating the basic, strategic and anticipatory research in fields of engineering, science, humanities and management fraternity for the societal improvement with Make in India approach. NIT Rourkela is the only NIT that has awarded approximately 400 Ph.D. degrees in the last three years. Over 6000 journal papers (Indexed by Web of Science and Scopus) are published by students and faculty members in the previous three years.
In 2004 The Student Activity Centre (SAC) was formed within the central academic area and became the hub of all extra-academic pursuits and is the main organizing office for all student symposiums and annual events. It is an independent body that catered to students’ extracurricular need. Earlier during the 90s, the students started contributing to society graciously through several NCC, NSS and Rotaract Club programs. The SAC societies like the AV (Audio-Visual) Association changed to the Film and Music Society and the Cultural Society to Literary and Cultural Society. The Technical Society and the Sports societies were add-ons to SAC, considering students’ growing passion towards these fields. The Student Activity Centre (SAC) is the central hub for student activities, student organizations, programming, events, sports, recreation and fun at the institute campus. Institute Counselling Services is an add on to NIT Rourkela which deals with various important aspects of a student’s life.
As year passed NITR turned into a multidisciplinary house of knowledge by adding multidisciplinary courses like Life Science department in 2008 and Integrated M.Sc. and School of Management Admission in 2010.Today with twenty academic departments offering a wide range of courses designed to meet the industry and academia’s current requirements, NIT Rourkela has one of the nation’s most diversified curricula. NIT Rourkela is one of the few institutes which have departments like Food process engineering, Ceramic Engineering, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Industrial Design, Life Science, and Management. Besides this, there are six Academic Centres and nine Centres of Research, two of them recognised as Centres of Excellence by external Government agencies.
Today NITR, holding its intellectual capital, the human resource, the library, the laboratories and equipment, and its tradition of scholarship, is an ocean of knowledge that is waiting to be tapped by the engineers and entrepreneurs in industry for creation of wealth and welfare of humanity backed by Centre for Technology Innovation and Industry Relations (TIIR). Inaugurated by the former president of our nation Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam in 2010, TIIR project is a proud face of the institute. The project aims to promote R&D work of the small emerging companies of the nation. It contributes a small part to nation building by bringing its faculty and students closer to industry.
Foundation for Technology & Business Incubation (FTBI), a section 8 Not for Profit Company housed under Center for Technology Innovation and Industry Relations (TIIR) in 2016 is an effort in the same direction. FTBI provides facilities like office and manufacturing spaces, capital equipment and laboratory for prototyping, 24X7 internet, power backup and water supply, legal and IPR services, with financial support to attend training and skilling programmes, and funding for the fledgling start-ups. In present FTBI houses 46 incubated start-ups, 8 patents, 28+ pre-incubation teams with 150+ jobs generated.
In 2010 the former president Pranab Mukherjee laid the foundation stone for Golden Jubilee Building which today is the tallest building of Rourkela and one of the tallest academic building in India. The Golden Jubilee building of NIT Rourkela was inaugurated by the Union Education Minister of India, Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’, whose foundation was laid to commemorate the completion of fifty years of the institution’s existence. The vision of having this building was to fulfil one of the essential mottos of the institute to enhance efficiency in the administrative functioning and amalgamate technology with this process to make it more people-friendly.
NITR is one stop centre for its community. Apart from having Digital classrooms, Well-equipped laboratories, Central Library, Halls of Residence, Sports and Fitness facilities, Swimming Pool, Clubs, Canteens, Health Centre, Post Office, Banks & ATMs, Guest Houses, Canteens, Shopping centre, Organic farm, Green campus and many more, it is also actively working on the ongoing project of Integrated Sports Complex and have started the initiation for construction of an extension building of NITR in Bhubaneswar. It is also participating actively in Unnat Bharat Abhiyan activities.
The past decade was full of achievement and success stories. NITR is proud to enter in its 60th year having so many distinguished alumni from top industry and various fields, few among will be part of the much awaited Diamond Jubilee event. With the efforts to excel NITR community hope that the institute will keep on excelling in the academia and wish that the students reaches to the new heights in future.