On Tuesday, June 5, 2007, the Andhra Pradesh Government signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the US-based Georgia Institute of Technology to set up the latter's international campus in the city of Hyderabad. The government has allotted 20 acres of land in Hyderabad to commence the Institute's operations.

The MoU was signed by Dr Gary Schuster of GIT and Dr Venkataramana, Principal Secretary, Higher Education, in the presence of Chief Minister Dr Y S Rajasekhar Reddy.

The Georgia Institute of Technology is a premier technological institute of the US, which first opened its doors in 1988; it has its main campus in Atlanta, Georgia and international campuses in France [Images] and China. GIT is ranked as the fifth best technological university in the US, recognized for its accomplishments in research and teaching in subject areas like management, science, architecture, computing, engineering and liberal arts.

The Institute will go through the formality of procuring approvals from the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) to commence its academic programmes in due course of time.

The GIT team visited several Indian cities to scout for a suitable international campus location -- a 10-member delegation visited Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam in December 2004 to decide on the future destination of their Indian campus. Subsequently, a 12-member high-level delegation visited Hyderabad in April 2006.

At the signing ceremony, Dr Reddy told newsmen he was hopeful that the presence of the Institute in the city would add pace to the State's development of the higher education sector, and pledged support towards its success.

The State Government has also promised GIT another 50 acres of land in Visakhapatnam in future, for the expansion of its operations and to build a state-of-the-art technology campus in Andhra Pradesh.

The Chief Minister is confident that the association of GIT will help churn out the best talent pool from the state. He also praised APInvest, the agency responsible for bringing GIT to Andhra Pradesh.

Dr Schuster, on his part,  expressed his pleasure at choosing Andhra Pradesh as the destination for GIT's offshore campus after a stringent scrutiny procedure adopted by their evaluation team. He complimented the State Government for its proactive role in extending all possible support to this endeavour.

The Minister for Technical Education R Chenga Reddy, Advisor to IT and CEO of APInvest Dr C S Rao, Chairman of AP State Council of Higher Education Dr K C Reddy and other senior officials were also present at the MoU signing ceremony.