On the second day of the Peer team visit to Acharya Nagarjuna University as part of National Accreditation and Assessment Council (NAAC) reaccreditation process, it noted the shortage of staff in some of the Self-Finance Courses and questioned as to how they ran the department without permanent faculty for so many years.
At the university auditorium it engaged in an interactive session with the students, who enthusiastically replied to all their queries. The students gave a good feedback of the university academics and infrastructure, but told the panel that there was no `Grievance Redressal Cell' contrary to the fact that it was functioning well.
Both the teams made a whirlwind tour of all the departments in hot sun watching countless power-point presentations.
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The team members assessing MA Journalism and Mass Communication were impressed with the placements the department was able to achieve and the awards it staff and students had got at various fora.
It was, however, not happy with the Audio-Visual Studio, which according to them was not adequate at all and wanted that to be called only a Laboratory unless it came up with proper a acoustically treated studio. Looking at the equipment, Prof A. Balasubrahmanian said they (computers and editing suits) were inadequate for the training 65 students being trained here. Cultural events were organised in the evening at which students displayed their latent skills.
It was also perplexed the way department was run for seven years without permanent faculty.
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The Peer Team was led by M.I. Savadatti, former Vice Chancellor, Mangalore University, assisted by A. Balasubramanian, Director, Culture and Cultural Relations, Pondicherry University, Bharati Ray, former Pro-VC University of Calcutta, D.K. Maheshwari, Head, former –Dean, Faculty of Life Sciences at Gurukul Kangri University, Haridwar, Madhu Dikshit Head, Cardiovascular, Pharmacology Division, Central Drug Research Institute (CDRI), Lucknow, Anant TCA, Delhi School of Economics, and B.S. Ponmudiraj, Assistant Advisor NAAC, Bangalore.