Collegiate Times

Virginia Tech plans to expand the university by building one of the first foreign campuses on Indian soil.

While Tech already has centers in the Dominican Republic, Switzerland and Egypt, an Indian satellite campus would be the university’s first in Asia.

The proposed school will focus on information technology, automotive engineering, nanoscale science and engineering and biotechnology, as well as other related subjects.

Surajit K. De Datta, associate vice president for international affairs, traveled to India with President Charles Steger in 2006. As a member of the project’s steering committee, he continues to play an important part in creating the plans for this endeavor.

“There are a lot of hoops to go through,” De Datta said, explaining the trials he and other staff members endured to create a partnership in India.

To date, a timeline for the project or a complete list of costs to the university has not been released, but De Datta has a timeframe in mind.

“We are hoping to have a fully functional program in a minimum of two years,” De Datta said.

De Datta said there were initially three necessary elements the university required in a partnership: an investment of $5 million, 30 acres of land and 70,000 square feet of indoor space for the campus. This was finally fulfilled when MARG Limited, a growing infrastructure development company, agreed to accept Tech’s requirements.

Tech will be responsible for contributing at least $3 million, setting tuition, awarding degrees and forming the university. An established trust between MARG, and the university will oversee financial resources and budgets.

According to De Datta, no taxpayer dollars will be used in the initiative.

While the campus would offer masters and doctorate programs, Steger also wrote in a letter detailing his plans for an India Initiative that the school would offer “dual degree programs between Virginia Tech and Indian Institutions.”

Steger also included in his letter that Tech’s campus in India would focus on applied research to “benefit industry and create further opportunities.”

Tech already attracts a large number of Indian students, and according to Steger, the campus would allow the university to forge a relationship with the nation as a whole.

University officials plan to locate the campus in an urban area in close proximity to Chennai, the fifth most-populated city in India.

De Datta, also the director of the office of international research, education and development, stressed the importance of establishing Tech’s Indian campus in a populous region in order to “follow where the students are, where the demands are and where the Indians are.”

Additionally, De Datta said choosing an urban location will help students find work after graduation. Also, because a degree awarded from Tech’s India campus will hold the same weight as a traditional Virginia Tech degree, De Datta said graduates would be “highly competitive in the world market place.”    

Madhav Marathe, another member of the project’s steering committee and a computer science professor at Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, predicts that Tech will benefit from the satellite campus in numerous ways.

Marathe listed several advantages, including “access to a large pool of technically skilled individuals, a chance to work on important societal problems in an emerging economy, an opportunity to work on unique and important multi-disciplinary scientific and policy problems in collaboration with local scientists, students and policy makers.”

Marathe indicated that studying abroad would allow students and faculty to address issues “that are motivated by the Indian context but whose solutions would (have) global impact.”

A version of this article appeared in the Apr 27 issue of the Collegiate Times.