The Vision and Practicing of Holistic Wellbeing at IITBBS

To have an open-minded and compassionate mind set, be able to put enough effort into academics while taking time for socio-cultural and sports activities at the same time, and playing his/her role as a good human, team player, partner, and friend without conflicts.

Essentials:

• Regular physical activity,
• Healthy diet,
• Healthy sleep, controlled mind,
• Supportive relationships and friendships,
• Sense of purpose and meaning.

Mechanisms Adopted at IIT Bhubaneswar:

• Creation of a healthy, clean, green, bright, positive and eco-friendly campus environment by design, as a very important pre-requisite - IITBBS campus is now exceptional in all of the above,
• Adopting a very effective Counseling service and stress busting,
• Conducting workshops and talks on life skills, success and failure, substance abuse, gender sensitivity, vigilance awareness, human values and relations, national heritage, general studies, … by the side of developments in Science & Technology,
• Organizing an exceptional Rejuvenation-cum-Orientation programme to the freshers,
• Ensuring a completely drug – free campus,
• Mandatory yoga and meditation training through the Extra Academic Activity,
• Promoting a healthy and disciplined student culture in the campus,
• Creating a bi-cycling and exceptional sports culture
• Encouraging vibrant socio-cultural activities and other activities through student gymkhana
• Creating and engaging students in vibrant outreach and service oriented activities
• Creating and ensuring very responsible health care services
• Healthy and hygienic catering service in the mess and food outlets
• Ensuring efficient functioning of the systems and services in the institute.

IIT Bhubaneswar Campus – Designed and Created to be Clean, Green, Bright, Positive and Eco-friendly:

• When Prof Kumar took over as director, the phase-1 infrastructure of 1.10 lac SqM was half done. After joining, while completing the same, he got the opportunity to plan and create the phase-2 infrastructure with 2.02 lac SqM.
• Prof Raja Kumar personally took the responsibility of ensuring bright, spacious, positive, green and eco-friendly ambiance in the campus and carried out the following by himself:
  • Master planning for Phase-2 and beyond up to the student strength of 5000,
  • Not so satisfied with the architect’s version, he himself gave the architecture for the academic and residential campuses which were agreed upon by all,
  • Plan for the full landscaping and greenery and providing guidance in realizing it, in-house.
  • Interiors and exteriors of buildings were designed mostly using natural light, natural ventilation, greenery etc., and worked on the planning and architecting. It may not be out of place to mention that he personally intervened to take the design exercise to 2nd and 3rd iterations and 90% the colour schemes, tiles, slabs, pavers, etc., and patterns were his personal choices and selections.
• Finally, 90% of phase-2 infrastructure was also completed during his term (it would have been 100% but for defaulting by the contractors of STP line and the external development works of the academic campus ),
• Nearly 50,000 trees were planted with excellent planning and theme-based plantations.

• Creation of the Master Plan for the Growth of IITBBS
• Creation of the Architectural Plan for Academic Campus
• Creation of the Architectural Plan for Residential Campus
• Creation of an Exceptional Landscaping and Greenery and Glimpses of Designs Provided

Creating a Strong Outreach Programme and Engaging Students Constructively, Therein:

Through R &D: IITBBS has a strong R&D outreach programme under which the institute helps solving the research problems which are local and national. The institute also takes along some other institutions in its endeavors.

Ex: Design and Innovation Center, IIT Bhubaneswar has been acting as a hub and been mentoring the activities at BOSE -Cuttack, Kv-2 - Bhubaneswar, Ravenshaw University, and CET – Bhubaneswar,

Through the Unnat Bharat Abhiyan (UBA): The institute adopted 6 villages in which the institute has been trying to make technology interventions to make a difference in the lives of people with a strong constructive engagement of students.

Inspiring school children of the hinterland to pursue education and innovations in S&T: Prof Raja Kumar was keen and created a strong outreach programme to inspire the school children from the hinterland with an inspiring engagement of students.

Through Continuing Education Programme (CEP) and Training: IITBBS has a strong CEP through which the institution helps the other organization and industry by catering to their continuing education and training needs.

• IIT Bhubaneswar playing a role in the area of design and innovation