Kerala - Thrissur   

Call to restore KAU’s forestry faculty

Thrissur: The demand for restoring Kerala Agricultural University’s Faculty of Forestry has been gathering force over the past few years. The faculty was withdrawn on January 18, 1988.

“We hope the faculty will be restored this year as the KAU’s College of Forestry is poised to celebrate its silver jubilee. The college is the only one in the State authorised by the Indian Council for Agricultural Research to teach tropical forestry. The faculty status is needed to develop KAU’s forestry wing into an international centre, and enhance its academic and research programmes,” said B. Mohan Kumar, Associate Dean of the College of Forestry.

The pro-faculty brigade argues that section Section (5) and (19) of KAU Act provides that the KAU shall have a faculty of forestry.

“The provision makes it mandatory to set up a forestry faculty. At its 162nd meeting and the 39th Academic Council meeting on September 9, 1986, the KAU executive committee had approved the formation of a forestry faculty. Other State Agricultural Universities that started forestry programmes around the same time KAU did, including the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore and the University of Horticulture and Forestry in Solan, have full-fledged faculties for the discipline,” Dr. Mohan Kumar adds.

Students of KAU’s College of Forestry have achieved several honours. “The faculty status was withdrawn mainly because some of the formalities, such as requesting the State government to issue the first statues for the faculty, could not be completed. Restoring the faculty status does not apparently involve any additional expenditure,” said E.V. Anoop, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Wood Science in the College of Forestry.

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