History

Year of Establishment : 1916

History of the department : Established in the year 1916, the Department of Geology, University of Calcutta has set a standard in teaching and research in Geology. The Department has introduced the current curriculum (M.Sc. in Applied Geology) in 2005, and takes great satisfaction that the syllabus suggested by the UGC afterwards has similar emphasis. However, we are now again reviewing the existing curriculum to make it more comprehensive.

The Department has included the interdisciplinary subjects like Remote Sensing and GIS, Environmental Geology, Hydrogeology, Geology of Coal and Petroleum, Basin analysis, Geomathematics, Mineral resources and management, Mineral Exploration and Geotechnical Engineering, etc. An attempt has been made to maintain a balance between the fundamental disciplines and the newer branches to equip the students with the necessary skills to match the newer, more stringent requirements of the academia and the highly competitive job-market.

Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, conducted a survey to evaluate India’s research performance, through time and in comparison with other nations, overall and for subject areas relevant to science and technology. The report has been published as “International Comparative Performance of India’s Research Base (2009-14)” (commissioned to Elsevier by DST). In that report DST has ranked top 30 institutes of India based on different parameters. All the members of Dept. of Geology, CU would be proud to know that University of Calcutta has been ranked number one in the category “Subject area and overall publication-count-to-active-researcher ratio” [ratios of publications divided by number of active researchers or number of publications per active researcher] in the Earth and Planetary Sciences subject area category. The ratio was 7.9 in between 2009-2013 and it got increased to 8.1 in between 2009-2014.

The Department also hosts the age-old The Geological, Mining and Metallurgical Society of India (GMMSI), the mouth piece of the society is the Quarterly Journal of the Geological, Mining and Metallurgical Society of India (later renamed as Indian Journal of Geology) which publishes scientific research papers in several domains of Earth Sciences.

Dr. E.W. Vredenburg of G.S.I. was the first professor, K.K. SENGUPTA was the first Indian teacher

1. Fellow, Indian National Science Academy - 12
2. Winner, WADIA medal of INSA -2.
3. Winner, K.NAHA medal of INSA – 2
4. Winner, Asiatic Society Medal- 4
5. Winner, Kamalkumari award- 1
6. Winner, S.S. BHATNAGAR Award in Earth, Atmosphere and Marine Sciences, the highest award from the CSIR - 3
7. Vice-Chancellors of Three Universities
8. Director, Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad
9. Director, Central Fuel Research Institute, Dhanbad
10. Director, K.D. Malviya Institute of Petroleum Exploration, O.N.G.C. - 3
11. Member, Oil & Natural Gas Commission-1 Director, Atomic Minerals Division -1
12. Director General, Geological Survey of India – 4

Special award/ recognition from UGC or related statutory body: 1

Thrust areas in teaching and research of the academic department:

• Structural Geology and Geodynamics
• Petrology
• Paleobiology and Paleoecology

Teaching support:

• Experimental demonstration to understand basic geological phenomena
• Independent research problem handling for fulfillment of M.Sc. curriculum
• Lecture series organized by students on state of the art geological problems
• Exposure of each student to industry
• Encouraging workshops and seminar at International and national conferences/workshops
• Hands on training with highly sophisticated instruments and software in established national and International laboratories.

Major activities : The students are encouraged to learn lessons in different subjects through digital processes in the classrooms.The students need to participate compulsorily (as part of the present M.Sc. Applied Geology curriculum) in seminar presentation to deliberate their ideas on different challenging and emerging topics of Geological Sciences. This paves their ways for future career, The students after completion of their course, are placed for employment in different reputed national and international mineral and oil industries through campus- interviews. Some of the industries/ houses where our students were placed include Electrosteel, Somica- Aurum, Lafarage, Weatherford, Joy Balaji, Adhunik, Jindal Steel , Hindusthan Zinc, MSPL, Emami and many others. All the students enthusiastically participate as back-bones when this Department organizes national seminars/ workshops, During seminars/ workshops, they (students) are also exposed to different challenging ideas; they also present their Master’s level- research findings in those seminars/workshops.

Links:

• Departmental Link: http://www.caluniv.ac.in/academic/cu_geo/index.html
• CU Library Link: http://www.caluniv.ac.in/libraries/library.html

Additional information : The students (during the end of their second semester examination) are sent to reputed industries of the country as a part of their compulsory summer training program. where the students get hands- on training to know techniques involved in mineral and oil- exploration. Some reputed organizations (where the students were sent in recent years) are ONGC, SAIL, Coal India, UCIL, Rio-Tinto, Tata Steel, GAIL and so on. It is a regular affair that faculty members of the Geology Dept, CU visit national and international Universities/ Institutions to exchange their scientific views and findings. Some of these are University of Lisbon, Kanajawa University, Monash University, University of Vienna etc. Faculty- members do participate in several international / national scientific assemblies like AGU, AOGS, IODP very often to present their scientific ideas. The present M.Sc. (Applied Geology) syllabus has been revised very recently in order to incorporate modern developments in different branches of Geology. Departmental library of CU Geology contains numerous valuable book and journals and also houses question papers of all previous years and students have easy access to those.

Contact

Campus : Ballygunge Science College

Address for communication : Ballygunge Science College, Department of Geology, University of Calcutta, 35, Ballygunge Circular Road, Kolkata – 700019