DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY

" Give the villagers village arithmetic, village geography, village history and the literary knowledge that they must use daily.." -Mahatma Gandhi.

Padmasree Professor Shiba Prasad Chatterjee (22.02.1903 - 27.02.1989)

the founder father of Indian Geography

Journey of the Department


The Department of Geography runs Undergraduate Honours and General Courses under the Choice-Based Credit System (CBCS) introduced in 2018-19 session and ongoing 1+1+1 system. Geography, as the discipline that bridges the Humanities and Science streams plays important role to cope up with the contemporary nature’s freaky incidents. The domain of geographical knowledge helps the learners to react with the nature in eco-friendly way, to utilize the natural resources in a sustainable manner. The discipline helps the scholar to interact with the society keeping their emotion in mind. The future prospects of the discipline of geography are remarkable. Especially, after the introduction of the geo-informatics and geo-spatial science in the field of geography, it has become one of the mother subjects of all modern social sciences. The learners can gain expertise in the field of Disaster Management like coastal management, river bank management, environmental management etc., all of which have high job prospects. In addition, students can pursue further higher studies and research, take up teaching jobs, appear for competitive examinations, gain employment as Geographical Information Systems officer or get a job in tourism industry, can become cartographer, environmental consultant, regional surveyor, nature conservation officer, etc.

VISION, MISSION AND OBJECTIVES

VISION

We envision that the department will continue to build reputation as one of the leading undergraduate programmes in this backdrop region in mapping science, environmental analysis and planning, rural and regional development & socio-economic studies.

MISSION

  • To explore the acquisition of core knowledge in the discipline and the application of such knowledge in to the real world contemporary issues through quality teaching.

  • To provide the exposure regarding the distribution patterns of the World’s physical and cultural features and their implications for better use and management of resources to the policy makers.

  • To create awareness through the seminar/conference/workshop organization about the relevance of geographic dimensions of social, cultural, political, economic, environmental issues of the present time and to address them more effectively.

  • To orient our students with the geographical education with modern technology and place them in the job sectors.

  • To establish a research oriented unit by which this backward area can retrieve the provisions of higher education and express them in the field of innovative research.


OBJECTIVE:

As the department and the college are located in the remote backward deltaic region which is a very important landform feature both in the national as well as continental and global geography, it becomes a rather very important responsibility of the department to make special effort to develop understanding of the features of the physical, ecological, social, and economic set up of the Sundarbans in general and that of the state of West Bengal in particular. This provides another mission to the department: to develop a thorough understanding of the Deltaic region with a special emphasis on the state of riverine Bengal. This is a special challenge for this department. Deltaic areas present a peculiar set of specific characteristics that call for special ways of handling and management. These mountain specificities are:

1. Inaccessibility-The primary attributes of inaccessibility are isolation, distance, limited access and invisibility of problems.

2. Fragility-The primary attribute of fragility is the highly vulnerable nature of natural resource base (rapid deforestation due to unscientific growth of population), making the areas highly prone to rapid degradation (floods, river bank erosion etc.).

3. Marginality- Sundarban deltaic areas are marginal in physical terms. Soils and land are marginal in their production and their bearing capacity. People of Sundarbans coastal belts generally are not in the decision-making mainstream, resulting in general neglect of their interests.

4. Diversity-The deltaic areas, by virtue of their altitudinal and topographic barriers, display a great diversity of their physical and cultural characteristics. They have ecological, biological, cultural and institutional diversity.

5. Opportunities- Coastal areas have a comparative advantage in terms of development opportunities in some aspects. Examples of some such aspects are hydropower, tourism, horticulture, vegetable seeds, off-season vegetables, medicinal plants and other high value products which are found only in mangrove deltas. That’s why, Sundarban Development Board was constituted.

The department has objective to develop a complete understanding of the total environment of the Mangrove Sundarbans in general and that of the state of West Bengal in particular. Included in this mission also is an understanding of the geo-political and global-environmental significance of the world heritage site-Sundarbans. The impact of the Sundarban deltaic environment needs to be understood at local, regional, and continental / global scales. The department is ready to take challenges to make some headway in the direction through teaching relevant courses, undertaking research on related topics dissertation levels, conducting seminars and publications etc. through the Geographical Society of Sundarbans.


Strengths

  • Well Qualified and dedicated hard-working teachers of the department. Contractual Teacher & Part time teacher is also very hard working and efficient. All the teachers have good experience in teaching Geography and are well knowledge with the syllabi and question patterns of our affiliated university. The coordinated effort of the teachers and the students compel them to work hard and has yielded results. The College have separate department with 2 classrooms, 1 GIS based Computer Laboratory with 16 computers, 1 Geo-Physical laboratory, 1 Share basis Conference-cum-Seminar Room and 1 Office Room for Geographical Society of Sundarban including Departmental Library & 1 Departmental Staff Room.


  • 1. NET/SLET/SET qualified faculty – 03

  • 2. Faculties registered into the Ph. D programme – 02

  • 3. Faculties are engaged in their post doctoral work - 01

  • 4. Faculties are recognized experts in their fields and act as resource persons for Academic programmes at varied universities/colleges.

  • 5. Though there is no recognised research Centre, Two of the faculty members are/were the Principal Investigators in the UGC-Minor Research Projects.

  • 6. The Department organizes different National/State/University/College Level Seminar regularly for the betterment of the academician.

  • 7. Faculties attend different UGC-HRD sponsored faculty recharge programmes like Orientation Programme/ Refresher Course/Seminar/Conference/Workshop/Syllabus Modification/Question Faming/ Moderation or any other programmes assigned by the University time to time.

  • 8. Department has a library with adequate reference books and text books.

  • 9. The Students and Teachers of this Department are attached with the Social work through NSS by which they can aware the society through geo-environmental education.

  • 10. Students are taken to various fields throughout India to give them exposure regarding geographical environment and activities as per university guidelines.

  • 11. The economically backward students enjoy the facilities from the Students’ Aid Fund at the time Excursion.

  • 12. The department has oriented the students to wear the specified uniform in the field excursion.

  • 13. We have the ample scope to visit Geological Survey of India to gain proper knowledge in the field of Rocks and Minerals.

  • 14. The Department provides the students internet facilities and online library like INFLIBNET etc.

  • 15. Students of the Department may enjoy having the live exposure of geographical features and they may interact with the different human societies throughout the country by their excursion.

  • The Department is associated with “The Geographical Society of Sundarbans” which works for the development of the discipline of Social Science.

Opportunity

The separate space for the department gives the students and the teacher’s integration and provides unique environment in their study. The department arranges seminar/ conference/ special lectures time to time where the students get exposure to interactive sessions and current development of the subject. The department inspired the students by taking extra classes on career development and preparatory discussions on competitive examinations. Career Counselling partially has been started through Alumni association.

1. To get updated knowledge to clear SET/NET and other competitive examinations.

2. To get introduced to the best minds in the field through interactions with resource persons from other institutions. List of eminent academicians and scientists/ visitors to the department:

3. To be enriched with the excellent visit of the eminent expert from different University and allied sectors of Education.

4. To get introduced to the contemporary journals available in state.

5. To get proper information about career prospects in and around states after pass out

6. To get regular interactions with the alumni exchanging views and suggestions.

Challenges

Most of our students are from financially weaker section; these force them to earn to carry out their courses. Another major problems is in our girls students are married. Some of the girls students are getting married in the middle of the course and is the major reason of the drop out. This dropout rate can be reduced if we can increase more number of free student-ship or half free student-ship. It is our challenge to reduce dropout rate. Our challenge is to open a research orientation unit including post graduate course in regular mode.

1. To achieve 100% success for our outgoing students.

2. To achieve at least 50% Students progression from UG (College) to PG (University)

3. To achieve at least 5% Students involvement / interests in research orientation.

4. To achieve new programmes like PG from University of Calcutta.

5. To achieve at least 10% placement from campus interview.

6. To get registration of the Geographical Society of Sundarbans under west Bengal Society Registration Act,1961

7. To set up a weather forecasting station.

8. To introduce the Post Graduate Diploma course on Natural Hazard & Disaster Management.