To give women more leadership roles, the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras has launched a new programme with an endowment fundraised from its alumni and CSR grants, reports Organiser.
Named ‘Women Leading IITM’ (WLI), the programme aims to give grants every year to accelerate the careers of women technologists and provide a supportive environment for women to thrive at IIT Madras.
This program will boost efforts to improve the number of women students, faculty, staff as well as create opportunities for their success. It is expected that $2 million will be raised by the end of 2021 for this programme.
The Women Leading IITM program will also include increasing the percentage of women faculty in Assistant Professorships to 20 per cent (from the current 15 per cent) and generating 30 per cent of all faculty applications from women candidates. The programme also comprises the establishment of an award for in leadership granted to women faculty to enable them to become next-generation ambassadors for a gender-balanced institute. The new grant will also pay for small-child travel while attending a conference, or pay a stipend to provide for better child care while at work (for children up to age 5).
Elaborating on the vision behind the initiative, Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, IIT Madras, said, “IIT Madras has made good progress in the last several years in increasing the percentage of women in the student population, from the undergraduate level to the doctoral programme. The participation of women in the non-teaching staff is also very good, and we are making every effort to close the gap in the case of faculty. The WLI programme will be a powerful catalyst to enable us to reduce the hurdles faced by women students, faculty and staff at IIT Madras to achieve their full potential.”
IIT Madras seeks to increase the recruitment of women faculty, run programs that provide physical and emotional support for women and create opportunities for women faculty and postdoctoral fellows to do interdisciplinary work that can yield international research recognition.
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