Shillong, May 26: Governor Satya Pal Malik on Thursday addressed the 49th University Day of the North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU).
Malik, who is the Chief Rector of NEHU, exhorted NEHU and its generations of students and teachers to march ahead towards a more interconnected, global-local and rooted knowledge system and its dissemination.
The Chief Rector advised the NEHU community to play an inspirational role in drawing more women into higher education as he in his inimitable style quipped that higher education is the ultimate source of women empowerment. NEHU as a central University needs to vigorously pursue this ideal of gender empowerment, which shall remain as the most significant contribution of NEHU towards the nation.
Malik cautioned against the illusion of standards of research and emphasized upon high quality research so that nobel laureates are produced from the Indian university system. The inner message of a continual striving to excel in research, teaching and in the overall, in sustaining a congenial atmosphere of sharing of knowledge within and outside the academic community never went amiss as Malik enthralled the enlightened audience.
In his trademark witty style, taking examples from his own life and his vast experience as parliamentarian and now as Governor in atleast four different states, Malik emphasized on the greatest role of University in building a generation of enlightened, educated and morally strong corps of educators.
Malik further exhorted the NEHU community in keeping up its good work and in serving the nation with a commitment to reach up to the highest standards.
In his speech, NEHU Vice –Chancellor Prof. Shukla mentioned the completion of the long awaited Career Advancement promotion of teachers that generated a new enthusiasm. The recent thrust on internationalization of higher education by the UGC and NEHU’s following of UGC’s footsteps, Prof. Shukla mentioned, has created a whole set of new centres and offices such as Office of International Affairs, IPR Cell and a highly prospective Design and Innovation Centre. Added to that is NEHU’s massive online courses (MOOCs) to be launched through well-equipped studios is a new beginning to achieve goals set by UGC in the form of SWAYAM program.
An ongoing Erasmus project with University Tartu, Estonia, AICTE Indo-US collaboration, visits by Consul Generals of Republic of Korea, Thailand, US and France opened up actionable collaborations between NEHU and such international Universities, he added.
He further informed that NEHU is collaborating with neighbouring countries as well as with major countries like Japan, France, US and Australia while work towards MoUs with Greece, Thailand, South Korea etc are in an advanced stage. The Vice-Chancellor also restated the benefits of National Education Policy (NEP) in terms of greater cross country student participation and mobility.
The whole year shall be celebrated by way of consolidating the areas of strength and by introspecting over weaknesses so that at the end of the 50th year the university gets back its lost sheen and once again builds itself and rises up at the international level.
