Departmental History

About the Department:
The Department of Geography works to derive a better understanding of our mother planet, to develop a comprehensive understanding about the resources that support the society and to meet the challenges of sustainability. A variety of methods and tools are employed to address different research questions, that includeseducational field trips, laboratory and experimental studies, remote sensing and Geographical Information System techniques and computer modelling. The Department is presently offering undergraduate Hons. course degrees to undergraduate degree students in GEOGRAPHY.The Department of Geography is committed and devoted to educate a new generation scholars who will reflect the diversity of intellectual perspectives, life experiences, and cultural backgrounds represented in society today.

History of the Department:
The Department of Geography started in July 2016 Academic year in the college. There was a long pending demand for this course to be introduced in this university. The department started its journey with two permanent faculty members, 12 Hons. undergraduate students and one laboratory non –teaching staff member. Being an affiliated college under the University of Calcutta, the department in the academic session 2016-2017, started teaching the annual system course offered by the University for undergraduate Hons. Students. Later on from 2018-2019 academic session the department started teaching the semester based CBCS course offered by the University of Calcutta together with the annual system. The annual system course curriculum continued upto 2019-2020 academic session.

Objectives:

• To promote the study and research activities in different branches for the subject.
• To bring Geographical awareness among the people to solve day to day environment related problems.
• To educate the masses for proper use of resources. Reduce, Reuse and recycling of Natural and Human resources.
• To contribute in the efforts to make the environment and surroundings clean. To build a greener and better place to live in.
• To join all disciplines in the academic domain on the issues of development in the social, ecological and economic aspect and to solve the real world problems holistically.

Vision and Mission:

• Vision:
  • To provide affordable quality education to each individual student taking admission in the department.
  • To facilitate students with knowledge and skills in their chosen stream, inculcate values, identify their hidden talents, provide them every possible opportunities to realize their full potentials.
  • To enable the students to pursue post graduate course in same or allied field and to get absorbed in suitable jobs where they can apply their subject knowledge gained from under-graduate and post graduate studies.
• Mission:
  To lead the development of academic, educational, and research directions of human and natural systems, Urban and Rural Problems and geospatial information science, harnessing the integrative nature of geographic science to answer fundamental questions of local, regional and global importance.

Teaching Learning during the COVID period (2020 March to 2021 November):
At the recent time under the pandemic situation due to COVID 19, the concepts of Blended Learning and Flipped Learning were adopted extensively where unlimited participation in teaching learning process can be facilitated via web.

So keeping the above in mind and to facilitate the pupils at the best possible way, the action plans followed by the teachers in the Geography Department under the Covid 19 situation include the following:

• The Department has continued from the part where the teaching got stopped since 21st March 2020. The Department started taking online classes for CBCS students since 25th March2020 on regular basis (almost 3 to 4 classes for each CBCS batch on all working days).
• The Department provided the necessary reading material/audio-video content online through email, whattsapp etc. to students of different batches.
• The Department also facilitated the students by providing OER (open educational resources) links for further study of different topics both under theory and practical.
• Assignments were provided to the students on regular basis in online classes which were conducted on synchronous platforms like Zoom and Google Meet. The term end University exams together with Internal assessments are all conducted for different batches using Zoom platforms. The entire session of internal assessment are also recorded in the Zoom platform session.