The Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, will set up an alumni cell to raise funds for infrastructure development and create a corpus for students’ welfare on the lines of the IITs.

IIEST director Parthasarathi Chakrabarti said the corpus would also be used to invite the teachers from prominent institutes to teach on the campus as chair professors.

A notice posted on the institute’s website by Arindam Biswas, the dean, international relations and alumni affairs, has called on all alumni interested in the venture to send their briefs to the office of the dean by August 14.

Director Chakrabarti said the alumni had contributed occasionally since the time the Shibpur institute was a government engineering college, but now they want to constitute a cell so that the resources could be tapped in a systematic and consistent manner.

“The IITs have such cells that play a major role in fund generation. IIT Kharagpur is an example. Through its alumni cell, it has been able to engage alumni like Vinod Gupta who has made major contributions towards the betterment of the institute. Our alumni network, in spite of its huge base, was not structured. We want to give it shape for better mobilisation and utilisation of resources,” Chakrabarti told Metro on Sunday.

The cell will promote participation of the alumni in the development of the institute in the form of endowment funds and corporate social responsibility funds, an official of the institute said. The alumni cell would also be used to generate funds for the development of new hostels and classrooms.

The director had, during his interaction with human resource and development minister Ramesh Pokhriyal, sought funds to build a hostel and an academic complex.

“We are in talks with the government about developing the hostel. But we also want to tap the alumni network for raising funds. At times, it may take time to get funds from the departments. If we can get the cell started on time, we can utilise the resources for such infrastructure development projects,” Chakrabarti said, citing the example of IIT Bombay, where the alumni are engaged in maintaining the hostels.

The IIEST hostel can accommodate 2,000 students though the institute can admit up to 3,800 students in BTech, MTech and PhD courses.

The alumni endowment could also be used to set up chair professorship like in IIT Kharagpur, an IIEST official said.

Vinod Gupta, an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur who graduated in agricultural engineering in 1967, visited his alma mater in March to hand over a cheque for $1 million dollars for a chair professorship.

The endowment for the A.S Davis Chair Professorship would be used to pay a top-up salary to a senior professor in thermodynamics in the mechanical engineering department to carry out advanced research at IIT.

“We hope to use the funds for similar purposes. An earlier grant of $2 million from Gupta had helped the IIT set up a management school and a school of intellectual property law. At IIEST, the cell is required for a similar drive to reach out to resourceful alumni,” the official said.