Revamping education: Lt Governor’s vision for SMVDU

Jammu, Nov 30: Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha chaired the 35th meeting of Executive Council of Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, Saturday.
The meeting was attended by Prof. (Dr.) Pragati Kumar, Vice Chancellor, SMVDU; Prof. Umesh Rai, Vice Chancellor Jammu University; Prof. Nilofer Khan, VC Kashmir University; Prof. Pankaj Chandra, Vice Chancellor & Chairman, Board of Management, Ahmedabad University; Prof. A.S.K. Sinha, Director, Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology; Prof. Manoj Singh Gaur, Director, IIT, Jammu; Dr Mandeep Bhandari, Principal Secretary to Lieutenant Governor; Shri Anshul Garg, CEO, SMVDSB; Sh Ajay Kumar Sharma, Registrar, SMVDU and other members of the SMVDU Executive Council.
The meeting discussed several important academic and administrative issues pertaining to Career Advancement Promotion of Faculty members, non-functional promotion of Non-teaching staff members, increasing enrolment, campus placements, University’s Outreach Programmes, promotion of innovation & start-ups, research, training and skill development programs.
The Lieutenant Governor emphasised on introducing new courses and rewriting the existing curriculum with the focus on capacity building to bridge the gap between availability and requirement of different sectors of the economy.
“University must formulate a comprehensive strategy to promote innovative programs and courses like Design Your Degree, Automation, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Management and Architecture with specialization in Urban & Town planning. We need to fill the gap in the availability of employable skills. We should also focus on strengthening of the School of Languages and promote regional languages and Sanskrit,” he said.
The Executive Council gave in-principle approval to various agenda points presented during the meeting. The meeting also deliberated on designing of curriculum and academic guidelines in align with NEP-2020, creation of Faculty of Medical Sciences under SMVDIME and other reforms to bring further qualitative improvement in the overall functioning of the University.
The chair was also briefed on the action taken report on decisions taken during previous meeting, ongoing construction works and the recent initiatives to strengthen SMVDU- Technology Business Incubation Centre.
Prof. (Dr.) Pragati Kumar, Vice Chancellor, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University presented various Agenda items before the Executive Council for approval and ratification.