NEW DELHI: As the Vice Chancellor of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit completed two years after assuming office on February 7, the varsity has presented a report on the achievements of the University since her joining.
Going by the report, within the past two years, the administration has strengthened a positive and conducive academic environment of the University by carrying out its core function of coordinating, streamlining, monitoring and evaluating the academic development process in the University.
The report further shared that a total of 143 faculty CAS cases have been completed and promoted to the post of professors (44), associate professor (18), assistant professors (33) and assistant professor stage II to III (48).
In addition,149 faculty members were inducted through open recruitment as- 29 professors, 79 associate professors and 41 assistant professors.The varsity highlighted that working towards gender equality, as of now 31 administrative positions are held by women, up from 19, two years ago.
Sharing the new academic initiatives in past year; the varsity said that work is in progress for establishment of special centres for Odia and Marathi.
In the category of student related achievements, the university shared in 2023, Bark hostel was made ready, an agreement was signed with Jio in December 2022 for making JNU a 5G enabled campus.
Talking about the financial inflows, JNU stated that a financial assistance of Rs 496 crore has been received from the Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) for the construction of nearly 10 projects; government of Assam had supported with Rs 10.1 crore in 2023 for the establishment of a special centre for Assamese Studies and Srimanta Sankardeva Chair at the school of Sanskrit and Indic Studies and recently, an MoU was signed with the Government of Odisha in February 2024 for the establishment of a special centre for Odia Studies.
Santishree is the first woman Vice Chancellor of JNU with the Ministry of Education (MoE) appointing her to the university’s top post on February 7, 2022.
Prior to this, Santishree was the Vice Chancellor of Savitribai Phule University in Maharashtra. The 59-year-old Pandit is also an alumna of the JNU where she pursued her M Phil as well as PhD in International Relations.