As many as 64 girls will receive gold medals out of a total of 84 gold medals that will be presented at the 20th convocation of the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) on April 12.
RGUHS Vice-Chancellor M.K. Ramesh said on Tuesday that 26,469 candidates will receive degrees and prizes at the convocation. Among these, 6,111 will get degree under faculty of medicine, 3,095 under dentistry, 1,278 under Ayurveda, Unani, Naturopathy, and Yogic sciences, 177 under Homoeopathy, 2,931 under pharmacy and 11,423 under nursing. This year, 68 candidates will be awarded doctorate. For the first time, candidates who have excelled in Ayurveda courses have been considered for gold medals. Three will receive the medal this year. Consideration has been given only to those from colleges having 25 students and courses offered in at least five affiliated colleges.
In another first, the university has taken a decision to constitute gold medals for subjects in postgraduate courses where there are no prizes or medals constituted by donors. “Twenty-five gold medals have been added by the university,” said M.K. Ramesh, in-charge Vice-Chancellor of RGUHS.
Each gold medal weighs 5 gm and is of 22-carrat gold. RGUHS has set aside ₹5 crore for the gold medals. The total spend of the university this year for the gold medals is ₹16 lakh.
Swetha Sridhar from M.S. Ramaiah Medical College topped the university with two gold medals and one cash prize. She scored an aggregate of 80.5% in MBBS. The 24-year-old, who has always been a topper in college, said she wants to pursue MD in either general medicine, dermatology or psychiatry.
No honorary doctorate
It is for the first time in six years that RGUHS will not be conferring honorary doctorate during the annual convocation. Though the names were discussed in the Syndicate, it failed to constitute an expert panel to shortlist the names to be recommended to the Governor. Owing to the delay in the process, honorary doctorate will not be given this time, officials said.
