PUDUCHERRY: The Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) of Union Ministry of Education has sanctioned a sum of Rs 206.94 crores to Pondicherry University for various purposes.
These include construction of new buildings and add-on buildings for academic departments, lecture hall complex, hostels for men and women students, research centres, staff quarters etc. In a release, Vice-Chancellor Prof Gurmeet Singh said that this grant will be utilised for the development of its main campus in Puducherry and other two in Karaikal and Andaman.
In the main campus, existing buildings will be strengthened with additional space, additional boys & girls hostels, additional staff quarters and state of the art 'Animal House Facility'. The other two campuses in Karaikal and Andaman will get a new men's hostel each.
In addition, UGC requested Pondicherry University to submit proposals to HEFA for additional grants to a tune of Rs 90 crores for construction of new buildings for Departments of Food Science, Performing Arts, Lecture Hall complex for community college, Students Amenity Centre-cum-Internet Access Centre, and for campus development like repairing and maintenance of roads, academic buildings, compound walls, etc and upgrading of the existing infrastructure.
Proposals were already submitted to UGC for starting new courses in Virology and Pharmacology with new modern lab facilities for extending research on communicable, non-communicable and rare diseases including infectious agents such as novel coronavirus.
The Vice Chancellor stated that in line with the New Education Policy 2020, the syllabus for all the academic programs are being revised as per the new guidelines given by UGC and ate duly updating it to make it industry-friendly.
Also, steps are being taken to introduce online academic programs for those who could not enroll in on-campus programs, whereby more number of students will benefit. At present, nearly 50,000 students are applying for the on-campus programs, out of which only 3000 students are being admitted every year.
Already, in a first in India, the varsity successfully implemented Student Academic Management System (SAMS) and Research Scholars Academic Management System (RAMS) whereby all academic and administrative processes are totally operated using online means, in an integrated manner with efficient and time-bound processes.
He also added that steps were being taken to provide at least two smart classrooms for each department-fitted with cameras and mike to telecast lectures live in the University’s website and also be recorded for future reference, by coordinating with the School of Media and communication of this University.
This will benefit the university in two ways, one by enabling students to anytime and anywhere to produce better learning outcomes and also creating a large academic database for online teaching and archives.
To upgrade the campus to international standards, more MoUs with foreign Universities and Institutes are being envisaged for student and faculty exchange programs, research extension activities.