Fill employability gap: LG Sinha

Jammu, Nov 30: Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha Saturday called to fill the gap in the availability of employable skills.

Chairing the 35th meeting of the Executive Council of Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University (SMVDU), the LG said, “We need to fill the gap in the availability of employable skills.”

He emphasised introducing new courses and rewriting the existing curriculum with the focus on capacity building to bridge the gap between availability and requirement of different sectors of the economy.

LG Sinha said that SMVDU should formulate a comprehensive strategy to promote innovative programmes and courses like Design Your Degree, Automation, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Management and Architecture with specialisation in Urban and Town Planning.

“The varsity should also focus on strengthening the School of Languages and promote regional languages and Sanskrit,” he said.

The meeting discussed several important academic and administrative issues pertaining to career advancement, promotion of faculty members, non-functional promotion of non-teaching staff members, increasing enrolment, campus placements, university’s outreach programmes, promotion of innovation and start-ups, research, training, and skill development programmes.

The Executive Council gave in-principle approval to various agenda points presented during the meeting. The meeting also deliberated on designing of curriculum and academic guidelines in line with NEP-2020, creation of Faculty of Medical Sciences under SMVDIME, and other reforms to bring further qualitative improvement in the overall functioning of SMVDU.

The LG was also briefed on the action taken report on decisions taken during previous meetings, ongoing construction works and the recent initiatives to strengthen SMVDU’s Technology Business Incubation Centre.

Vice Chancellor (VC) SMVDU, Prof Pragati Kumar presented various agenda items before the Executive Council for approval and ratification.

The meeting was also attended by VC University of Jammu (JU), Prof Umesh Rai; VC University of Kashmir (KU), Prof Nilofer Khan; Vice Chancellor and Chairman, Board of Management, Ahmedabad University, Prof Pankaj Chandra; Director, Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology, Prof A S K Sinha; Director, IIT, Jammu, Prof Manoj Singh Gaur; Principal Secretary to LG, Mandeep Bhandari; CEO, SMVDSB, Anshul Garg; Registrar, SMVDU, Ajay Kumar Sharma, and other members of the SMVDU Executive Council.