AICTE smart campus award: 8 TN colleges in final round

The award aims to seek engagement with all stakeholders, primarily the student community to draw their attention towards the immense scope and potential that the technology offers for abstract objectives such as cleanliness, sustainability, and the environment.

The rising use of technologies especially IoT, robotics, cloud, and automation has immense potential to re-model a campus into a smart campus, AICTE sources said.

According to them, the award will be divided into three categories of institutions as council’s approved polytechnics, engineering colleges, and deemed to be universities offering technical courses.

After three rounds, government-aided polytechnic colleges including Thiagarajar polytechnic college in Salem district, Murugappa Polytechnic college in Chennai, Rajagopal polytechnic college in Gudiyatham at Vellore district entered the final round of online evaluation conducted by the expert panel in AICTE.

In addition, five engineering colleges including one state-run institution falls under the second category, got selected for the final round.

Similarly, five deemed to be universities in the State have also come to the final stage of evaluation.

On the assessment area of clean campus, the judges will emphasise three areas such as cleanliness in and around the campus and waste minimization, water conservation, and management including wastewater management and reuse and rainwater harvesting. Accordingly,environment-friendly activities adopted and practiced by the campus greenery within the campus to provide pollution-free air and carbon-sink.

With regard to smart campus, emphasise on impact of deployment of digital technology in order for the students, faculty, and management in the campus to reduce consumption of natural resources (such as paper, gas, and energy).

Similarly, creating an ecosystem to ‘smartly’ connect and share the information with each other at the campus, institute, and national level.

AICTE sources further said that