August 20, 2016

Avantika University, India's first design university had their first Academic Advisory Board meeting at Pune, India on Saturday, August 20, 2016. The meeting witnessed presence from an extremely elite panel. It had a grandeur mix of members from the education and business fraternity. The primary objective of this meeting was to seek the feedback and get a corroboration on Avantika's academic model.

For Avantika, the meeting was guided and presided by Dr Sanjay Dhande, Chief Mentor and Dr Prasheel Suryawanshi, Project Director. Dr Prasheel welcomed the members and introduced Avantika University to the audience. Through his colloquy, Dr Dhande shared an interesting perspective on Avantika Philosophy of Education. Professor Sanjay Jain, Director â€" Design Education presented Avantika's education model with specifics on the offerings across semester modules. Prof. Jain also discussed the curriculum framework, and foundation program essentials. Further, he provided an overview of the core program and professional program tracks, along with a brief summary of internship and projects for Avantika aspirants. Dr Dhande and Dr Prasheel provided additional inputs during the session.

The members were appreciative of the model and provided interesting comments on the academic model delivery. A detailed discussion amongst panel members will help fine tune certain aspects of the curriculum framework within programs. The session resolved queries from the board members on a variety of topics- specifically around the curriculum framework, and around the core, professional programs. As part of the half-day discussion, Avantika panel received encouraging feedback on the foundation model. The team has further recorded inputs from all the members for planning the future course of action. As a next step, the team will now incorporate responses in the academic model, making the education impartment more relevant vis-a-vis the need of the hour.

Being a bold new experiment of setting up a different kind of institution in India, Avantika is seeking feedback, comments, suggestions and guidance from all the stakeholders. This discussion helped Avantika team to alleviate their new vision of higher education. Avantika's management team felt even more confident after this session as it will help them to propose and promote innovation in design education at large. The wealth of experience from this group will assist in shaping this new vision for higher education.