Madurai Kamaraj University (MKU) Vice-Chancellor Kalyani Mathivanan informed its Senate, the highest decision making body, on Thursday that a Chair named after former Finance Minister of the State and her father-in-law ‘Navalar’ Dr.V.R. Nedunchezhiyan has been instituted in the varsity “to propagate his missions, ideas, principles, contributions, services and achievements towards Tamil literature in political, social and administrative domains.”
Reading out a report in her capacity as the chairman of the Senate at its annual meeting on Thursday, Ms. Mathivanan said that the total outlay of State Government grant to the university had been increased from Rs.12.48 crore to Rs.15.36 crore in the revised estimate for the year 2012-13.
The varsity had also received Rs. 19.87 crore from various funding agencies such as University Grants Commission and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research between April 2012 and January 2013.
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The university had decided to introduce three new courses — M.Phil in Library and Information Science, M.Phil in Computer Applications and M.Phil in Botany — in the regular stream from the academic year 2013-14 apart from introduction of 107 under graduate, post graduate, diploma and certificate courses through the Directorate of Distance Education. Since September 2012, 70 candidates had been awarded Ph.D. degree in arts and humanities, 32 in science and one candidate had been awarded D. Litt.
It had planned to procure High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy (HRTEM) equipment at a cost of Rs. 3.9 crore for research activities in nano science.
In order to achieve the Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s vision of turning institutions of higher education emerge into centres of innovation and enhancing talent among youth, Rs. 1.15 crore would be spent on establishing smart classrooms, foreign language laboratories, entrepreneurship-cum-skill development centres and more.
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Five faculty members (two from chemistry and one each from physics, biological sciences and biotechnology departments) of the university had been selected for the Raman fellowship of the UGC to carry out post doctoral research in the United States during 2013-14.
The university will soon get four new Assistant Professors (one in Chemistry and the others in Biological Sciences) selected under the UGC-Faculty Recharge Programme aimed at giving a thrust to research environment in universities.
The university library had signed a memorandum of understanding with Information and Library Network, an inter-university centre of UGC involved in creating infrastructure for sharing of library and information resources and services among academic and research institutions, regarding digitisation of research theses.