PAU MADE NEED-BASED CURRICULAR PROGRAMMES TO PRODUCE COMPETENT SCIENTIFIC RESOURCE BASE: DR. GURSHARAN SINGH

LUDHIANA, DECEMBER 22:-----



The Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) has recently implemented the new course curricula of all the postgraduate programmes offered in 35 disciplines of the University after its revision in the light of recommendations of NCG (National Core Group) constituted by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) , New Delhi. Earlier, the courses of various undergraduate (UG) programmes in all the constituent colleges in PAU were reframed as per recommendations of the 4th Deans' Committee for the state agricultural universities in the Country aiming at providing entrepreneurship skills to the graduates to meet the needs of the stakeholders. The special experiential training to be given to the students in the new teaching schedule will enable them to become job providers rather than job seekers. The courses have been restructured to meet the national and global challenges in the emerging areas of bioinformatics, biotechnology, biodiversity, climate change, conservation of natural resources, precision agriculture, application of ICT in agriculture, said Dr Gursharan Singh, the Dean of Postgraduate Studies of the University.

He added that during the last over three years, as many as 14 new teaching programmes (both UG and PG) were started in the University with an overwhelming response to these. Multiple number of the new teaching programmes were initiated in the self-supporting stream, which apart from providing the quality education also strengthened the university exchequer. Two new schools were established i.e. School of Information Technology (SIT) and School of Agricultural Biotechnology (SAB) at PAU. Dr. Singh shared that the demand for these programmes can be gauged by the fact that during recently conducted interviews for the Ph.D programmes in Biotechnology, the number of applicants was more than 11 times the admission capacity. This speaks high of the academic standards set by the PAU, remarked he. Recently the accreditation of the University has been extended given to the high teaching, research and extension education standards maintained by PAU, as certified by a high powered committee constituted by the ICAR, New Delhi. The University has inked multiple number of MoUs with various international institutes/universities to provide opportunities to the students and faculty for collaboration in teaching and research, said Dr. Singh.
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