Authors: Sanyogita Manu, Anurag Bajpai, Satish Kumar, Rajan Rawal
Abstract:
The world today is grappling with the challenge of balancing development through responsible use of natural resources. The challenge only becomes more pronounced for developing economies like India, where improving the quality of life of the masses needs to be mindful of already starved natural resources. To this effect, the advent of clean energy economy is an imminent solution since it has the potential to respond to the challenges and deliver the projected growth in a sustainable way. To ensure that India is well prepared to transition to a clean energy economy, it needs to review its economic growth indicators in a holistic fashion. Workforce development is perhaps one of the most critical indicators for economic growth. It not only depends on the number of employed workers but also on the skills that they apply and how these skills evolve with the changing context. Education, a strong building block of workforce development, has an important role to play vis-à-vis its application at various levels in the development of a professional and can play a key role in imparting appropriate and contemporary knowledge through continuous curriculum enhancement to cater to the changing professional requirements, offering refresher courses, professional certification programs, vocational training, and other continuous learning programs. Technical education curriculum that supports the foundation of a profession and the ability to enhance it not only provides the required change for today but also establishes a process of evolution that would be able to respond to any subsequent changes in the future. This paper evaluates the potential of curriculum enhancement in the design and construction industry targeting building design professionals. It will discuss a plan proposed by the USAID supported ECO-III project with the support of Bureau of Energy Efficiency, Ministry of Power (India) that reviews the existing structure of the architectural curriculum in India, identifies methods for enhancement and outlines activities that can help in integrating sustainable design practices with the existing educational framework in partnership with the Council of Architecture.
