Chennai: In order to enhance curiosity and scientific temper, the Don Bosco School Matriculation School inaugurated a science centre in collaboration with a Canadian centre on Wednesday. The facility hopes to encourage students to ‘learn by doing’ and take science out of textbooks and make it more hands on. According to Rector Father John Alexander, scientists and doctors will be asked to make periodic visits to the laboratory.
“The idea is to encourage and motivate students in research and give them opportunities to scale higher,” he said. Present at the occasion was chairman of Nalli Dr Nalli Kuppuswami Chetti and MP and alumni of school Paul Manoj Pandian who inaugurated the Science Centre.
About 25 doctors, the alumni of the school, were also present. Rector Father John Alexander also declared Wednesday as Don Bosco Doctor’s day. The Science centre is a three-storey building inside the school campus covering 12,000 square feet. Chemistry, biology and physics laboratory has been set up so far and a fourth floor is yet to be constructed for Science exhibits where the school authorities hope to conduct Science conferences.
The equipment in the laboratory have been bought in collaboration with Ontario Science Centre, Canada. The cost involved for the building was around '5 crore. Each lab can accommodate around 40 students.
Apart from the existing faculty members, the retired and experienced faculty members will also be part of the laboratory. Jerom Rajan who taught Biology for the past 27 years said, “It is more on hands on training rather than just seeing models. So I am looking forward to teaching students while experimenting at the same with hi-tech equipment,” he said.
