St Xavier's College Raghabpur campus to come up with hostels

Kolkata: St. Xavier's College (Autonomous) is taking a slew of measures for academic expansion and infrastructure development and also setting up hostels for boys and girls on its Raghabpur campus in South 24-Parganas to cater to the students from the far-flung rural areas of the Sunderbans.

"We have found out that currently only students within a 15 km radius attend the college at Raghabpur, whose medium of instruction is Bengali. Hence, we have planned to set up two hostels - one each for boys and girls so that students from the interiors of Sunderbans can have access to higher education. The hostel fees will be nominal to ensure that they face no difficulty in staying in the hostels and pursue their studies," Rev Dr Dominic Savio, principal of St. Xavier's College said.

It may be mentioned that the Raghabpur campus, which started five years back, has been doing very well and the college intends to impart some soft skill development programmes and vocational training programmes to make them industry friendly. The college also intends to set up a community college on this campus.

"We will start post graduate courses in English, Political Science or International Relations and Education on its Park Street campus and in Bengali on Raghabpur campus from the academic year 2019-20. The College also has plans to start PG course in Chemistry," Savio said. The college also has plans to offer PhD in the subjects that will be introduced from the next academic year.

The College is also introducing Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) in all the subjects from the current academic session. Preparations began in July 2017 for framing curriculum and examination modes among other academic changes and now the college is ready to introduce CBCS.

"We had introduced the same in Commerce and Business Administration department last year and now it will be introduced in all subjects of Science and Arts," a senior official said.

The college is also starting a counseling cell for parents. "We have counseling cell for students. Now, we will be extending the facility to the parents as well as they are major stakeholders in progress and overall development of students. We believe in holistic development," the Principal maintained.