Dr. Anunaya Chaubey has been working as the Provost of Anant National University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat. He has done PhD in English Literature from Patna University and is also Salzburg Global Fellow. He is a well-known Artist and Academician in the fields of literature and art history. He is also a self-taught painter, illustrator and animator and his works clearly reflect the individual and communal worlds. Many of his paintings are to be found both in public and private collections all around the world. Over the past 10 years, he has taught courses on art appreciation connecting art with science, economics, entrepreneurship, environment, media and journalism at Salzburg Media Academy, Young India Fellowship, Naropa Fellowship, Vedica Scholars Programme, Harappa Education and Anant National University. Of late, he has been working on creating a course on poetry appreciation through a series of animation of poems in English and Hindi. 

Anant National University

What are the key factors that keep you connected with the education sector?

"My curious attitude to explore things and passion of educating students have kept me associated here"

I am a keen observer of different approaches to seek knowledge and learning practice followed by everyone in the society, especially the ones who make an impact and bring vast changes. The same is the biggest factor behind my long association with the education sector. 

Being the Provost of Anant National University, what is your philosophy of leadership? 

"A true leader in my opinion is the one who knows how to utilize team skills to achieve goals and offer equal opportunities to them"

As the Provost of Anant National University, which hosts the stakeholders including faculty members, students, parents from diverse backgrounds, it becomes important for me to be a team player and lead by example. Therefore, I ensure that my University delivers high-quality education, makes an inclusive space and creates equitable opportunities for everyone and my emphasis is always on promoting collaborative learning ambiance by bringing everyone on the same table. 

How do you strategize the key programs for the marketing and administration of your University?

"By combining our courses with other domains to offer a multidisciplinary knowledge to students"

At Anant University, we offer ‘DesignX’ programmes by integrating our design education with several other disciplines like Psychology, Behavioral Science, Economics, Physics, Public Policy, Art, History, Biomimicry and more to nurture students and transform them into such Designers who are holistic and innovative in their approach. In addition to this, we encourage our students to think in a solution-driven way and gain a multidisciplinary understanding of contemporary complex issues. Last but not the least, we regularly update the curriculum of our college to incorporate traditional practices and new-age technologies while bringing innovation in delivering our courses.

In your experience, how studying at your University will be beneficial for students?

"They will get job oriented education and global industrial exposure by studying in our college"

Our mission is to educate and train students in such a way so that they can understand the scope of indigenous solutions rooted in age-old traditions while being abreast of technological advancement in the digital age. And for the same reason, our teaching pedagogy is grounded in ecological concerns, technical understanding of various facets of the built environment and implications of the design intervention on the habitat. Consequently, our students get tremendous opportunities to work in a cross-disciplinary manner, make them more empathetic, integrate their roots and concerns for the community and help them to work for nature development using sustainable contemporary technologies and practices to offer contextual solutions.

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How does the curriculum of your University ensure the best practices of industry?

"Our curriculum is a perfect amalgamation of best courses, events, projects and industry interaction sessions"

Our curriculum goes beyond the traditional approach of imparting education through lectures and workshops as it's strongly rooted in creating a sustainable learning environment for students and we emphasize more on enhancing their practical learning experience. Therefore, we regularly collaborate with industry leaders and international institutions to work on real-life projects, organize exchange programmes, workshops and arrange best internships for our students so that they can get the opportunity to work across sectors, conduct interdisciplinary research, apply design thinking skills and devise solutions for critical problems. 

What do you think should be the University’s top priority over the next 10 years?

"Our priority in upcoming years should be to bridge the gap between students skills and industry demands"

In this digital world era, everything around us is changing very fast and the community, climate, environment, fashion, craft, education, healthcare and infrastructure sectors offer immense possibilities and growth opportunities for design thinkers and interventions. Also, industries nowadays are looking for such designers who possess multiple domain knowledge and can use their expertise in creating solutions for a better future. Therefore, our focus for upcoming years would be to bridge the gap between the challenges affecting across cultures and the need of designers to develop such technical skills that can provide them a holistic and contextual understanding of the problems. We also aspire to create Designers who are good communicators, collaborative workers and critical thinkers, therefore we are working to improve our educational methodologies and practices by adding more tools and disciplines to make our students the most sought-after professionals.

When you joined Anant National University, what was your vision for it and how far have you come along in implementing them?

"My vision was to establish world class infrastructure in college and produce best Designers, Architects and Engineers"

Our Anant National University was established with a vision to develop solutionaries who will devise innovative yet sustainable solutions in the domain of design and built habitat. However, creating such a comprehensive solution requires combined efforts of everyone including stakeholders such as Architects, Planners, Designers, Engineers, Researchers and others. And we started our journey with making Designers and Architects of the future and today we have added Engineers, Artists, Entrepreneurs and Researchers in the list. Along with this, my objective was to develop world class infrastructure, collaborate with global academic institutions and industries for faculties and students and offer world-class education to them. Our university currently has 8 centers that take up research and curriculum development and in the upcoming time we will be coming up with more centers that will help us continue with our multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research and pedagogy development.

What makes your college unique and different in comparison to others?

"Our industry driven educational delivery models and teaching methodologies makes us unique"

At Anant National University, we provide best theoretical knowledge and experiential learning to our students to make them innovative solutionaries. And this not only helps them solve everyday challenges but also creates a means of livelihood for them. Also, we make sure to stay compliant with the best industrial and educational standards by using a blended and multidisciplinary teaching approach so that we can make students understand the community problems and help them to think of innovative solutions for the same. Lastly, we conduct industry interaction sessions in collaboration with industry experts on a regular basis and also encourage them to become Entrepreneurs by providing them support through our incubation center. 

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What do you see as Anant National University’s greatest strengths?

"Our college infrastructure, collaborations we have with industries and opportunities we offer to students makes us strong"

Besides a strong focus, our strengths lie in our ability to keep us relevant and agile in the dynamic world of design by continuously upgrading the facilities and resources. Apart from this, factors which make us strong and resilient over time are our amazing college infrastructure, top-notch faculty members who are highly educated and experienced, international collaborations we have with reputed Industries and universities, community connect sessions we regularly organize and industry exposure and entrepreneurial opportunities we offer to our students. 

What are some plans that you are currently designing for your University international affairs and students?

"We are planning to do partnership with global institutions and industries for ensuring best learning opportunities for students"

Our University has partnered with educational institutes and organizations of global and national repute, including the University of Pennsylvania, University of Miami, Boston Architectural College, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Arizona State University (ASU), The Design Village (TDV), Sustain Labs Paris and IIT Kharagpur to provide best learning opportunities and training programs to our faculty members and student exchange on a global level and also to do research and curriculum improvement on a joint basis. Also, in summer of 2022, our students participated in workshops in Lisbon and Madrid and we have collaborated with the Penn Graduate School of Education to offer Certification courses to students and staff members to make them future leaders and also to enable them to do innovative research work in their respective domains. Lastly, I would like to inform you that many such partnerships are under work that aim to benefit both the faculty and the students in their journey of achieving excellence.