Nirma Chief Gets Doctorate From Florida Atlantic Univ

Karsanbhai Patel, chairman and managing director of Nirma group, has been awarded an honorary doctorate by Florida Atlantic University, Florida, US. The doctorate has been awarded in recognition of his outstanding accomplishments as a businessman and also his dedicated support to education.

The doctorate has been given at a ceremony held recently at the university campus at Boca Raton, Florida. He is the first Indian felicitated by this highest honour of Florida Atlantic University.

Florida Atlantic University awarded its first honorary doctorate to US president Lyndon B Johnson in 1964. Other awardees include Novel Prize winner, Elie Wiesel; Everglades activist and author Majory Stoneman Douglas, director and playwright, Joshua Logan, and NBC New anchor, Tom Brokaw. Florida Atlantic University is a state university of Florida spread over 850 acre of land with campuses at six different locations. It has more than 25,000 undergraduate and graduate students and 1,000 faculty members.

The university has nine colleges: College of Architecture, Urban and Public Affairs; Dorothy F Schmidt College of Arts and Letters; College of Business; College of Education; College of Engineering; Honors College; College of Liberal Arts; College of Nursing; and Charles E Schmidt College of Science.

All these colleges offer 71 bachelors programmes, 70 masters programmes, 3 specialist programmes and 16 doctoral programmes. As of May 2001, the university had awarded 81,655 degrees. Patel, son of a farmer, graduated in science and took up a job with the government of Gujarat as laboratory assistant. He left the job at 25 to set up a detergent manufacturing unit, which has gradually grown into a large business conglomerate called Nirma Group of companies.

Karsanbhai believes that exemplary achievement in business affairs alone does not make a well-rounded individual and good citizen. As a philanthropist, his efforts have included undertaking literacy drives, creating employment opportunities and backing relief activities.

He has set up the Nirma Education and Research Foundation in 1994 out of his personal wealth with the objective of spreading technical education in rural areas. Under the aegis of the foundation, institutes for imparting management, engineering and diploma studies were established with the aim of providing quality education.

These institutions, which are run on no-profit, no-loss basis, have collaborations and tie-ups with wellknown foreign universities for student and faculty exchange programmes.