Kalimpong College Institutional Distinctiveness

Each Institution is embedded with related values and ethics for successful planning and accelerating their Institution to cater towards their essential motifs and goals. Likewise, Kalimpong College also has identified several core values and sustains them strategically and executes them to perfection. Kalimpong College acts with utmost integrity and honesty and sincerely nurtures them with the highest academic, professional, and ethical standards. The College adheres and strives to achieve excellence by maintaining high standards in all its aspects, be it, at individual level, institution level or as a leader in higher education. Kalimpong College is the oldest co-ed college, having served the region for 61 years. It offers access to multiple streams of education. It has Arts, Science and Commerce streams along with the Bachelor of Business Administration (B.B.A), and IGNOU, all within the Campus. The college offers Honours in 12 subjects. Kalimpong College is the only college in the District of Kalimpong that has an IGNOU distance learning study Centre which provides Masters degree courses in ten subjects. The Department of BBA, a self- financing course, also offers two additional career oriented certificate programme courses such as Communicative and Functional English, and Tourism and Travel Management.

The motto of Kalimpong College is ‘Seek and Ye Shall Find,’ and its vision since its inception has been ‘Quality Education, Access and Equality’ which can also be seen as one area of distinctiveness of the institution and thrust area along with many others. The mission of the institution emanates from its vision to offer quality higher education and access (at a minimum cost, especially to stakeholders who are financially challenged, women, scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and minorities) in the region which includes not only the Darjeeling Hills, but the Dooars, the neighbouring state of Sikkim and the states of North-East India, and also the neighbouring countries of Bhutan and Nepal. It nurtures possibilities into reality by taking several measures for the successful implementation and achieving its goals. Within this framework:

1. The socially weaker sections such as SC, ST, OBC and Minorities get their deserved facilities at times of admission, scholarship etc. The College has an overwhelming number of female, minority, SC/ST/OBC and socio-economically weaker students. Kalimpong College facilitates the students to apply for various types of scholarships available in the College like Maya Devi scholarship, Neha Thapa scholarship, Dr. Talukdar scholarship, Ganga Pradhan scholarship, Lions Club scholarship, G. Pakhrin scholarship and also can avail other governmental scholarships such as Kanyashree, Aikyashree, Oasis, Swami Vivekananda merit cum means (SVCM) scholarship as well. There are designated teachers and staff members to take care of these needs of the students and utmost care is taken so that no students get deprived of the same.

2. The Career Counseling Cell of the college with the aid of different professional agencies guides, motivates and trains the students for cracking different competitive based examinations. Kalimpong College has the Satyendranath Tagore Civil Services Study Centre to cater to some of these needs. The BBA department of the college provides opportunities for the students to get different types of jobs both in-campus and out-campus selection. Although, the college does not have any vocational courses but the different departments take necessary steps in helping the students to acquire different life-based skills for their future purpose.

3. The College has the largest open access academic library in Kalimpong which is accessible for the use of the community. The College Library has been made accessible to the community. By taking permission from the office of the Principal, members of the local community can come and read books available in the library. By agreeing to the policies and rules of the institution, and payment of membership fee, members of the community and research scholars can also borrow books from the library, and have access to the e-library. Hence the College is offering extension service to the community through the College Library.
4. Departments have identified and ordered text books with high quality reference content for students to ensure that students actually buy and read their text books and reference material. Sponsors were found for a few students who could not afford the books. The books are ordered for both Honours and Programme students.
5. The college also has a free Wi-Fi enabled zone where the students can get access to unlimited download capacity. Thus, it doesn’t bring hindrance to prospective and serious students.

Thus, in a nutshell, we can say that with within the limited resources available, Kalimpong College tries and thrives to maximize the horizon for its beneficiaries and community in general and takes necessary steps for the accomplishment of the same. The College is taking every possible endeavour to strive towards excellence so that it can flourish in keeping with its motto of ‘Seek and Ye Shall Find,’ and its vision of ‘Access, Equity and Academic Excellence.’