Administrative procedures in IISc

In a comment on the post, Bharat says,

About administrative issues, the US universities have a really good system of "welcoming" new faculty. They have a half-day to a daylong "orientation" session for all new faculty. Presentations are made by people from administrative staff that is extremely relevant to the prevailing procedures in the university.

For example, an IIX can have a single day orientation for all new faculty that deals with presentations by senior faculty or administrative staff on the following topics:

1) Settling down: Campus accommodation, pay and benefits overview, Campus facilities: Gymkhana, Health Centre, Library, etc.

2) Kickstarting your teaching: Student admission procedures, grading system, course styles offered by current faculty, resources available for teaching, teaching awards.

3) Kickstarting your research: Selecting PhD students, Grant writing, introduction to funding agencies, buying equipment, travel and reimbursement procedure, fellowships available to new faculty and procedures.

4) Projects and Consulting: Rules, regulations, procedures etc.

5) Operational Overview of the Institute: Directors' office, Various Deans, Senate, Payroll and Finance, Support Staff, Guidelines in dealing with non-teaching staff.

6) Cultural issues: Many local culture specific issues that faculty coming back from abroad after a long time(or foreign faculty) may not know.

All it takes is a group of interested faculty/staff to put this together and this can sustain itself from year to year based on voluntary work.

 Because IISc (and most IITs) recruit only 3-4 faculty every quarter, it is impossible to hold orientation programs for new faculty. However, it is possible to write about each of this in separate posts. I will write about the above topic one by one in 2010. Thanks for the suggestion.