The Ministry of Education has permitted the establishment of seven new departments/programmes at the Central University of Karnataka here.

Central University Vice-Chancellor Battu Satyanarayana, addressing presspersons on university campus in Kadaganchi on Thursday, said that the university has redesigned the curriculum and is focusing on innovative and skill-based programmes to improve employable skills of students.

The seven new programmes are:

• Masters in Library and Information Science

• M.Sc Statistics and Data Analytics

• Five-year integrated Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws

• B.Tech Computer Science Engineering

• M.Tech Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning

• M.Sc Genetics and Genomics

• restructuring of life sciences programme as Plant Science and Animal Science

The MoE had also sanctioned 29 new faculty positions for hosting these departments.

Prof. Satyanarayana said that CUK is also establishing a Centre of Excellence in High Frequency Electronics in the campus, which aims at training manpower in high frequency electronics. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) have expressed their support for the activities of CUK under this centre. The centre is being established at a cost of more than ₹2 crore, having a partnership of 50% with Keysight Technologies, the industrial arm of the centre.

Grants for Research and Development

The Vice-Chancellor said that the CUK was successful in securing grants for activities like research, development and educational programmes; the university has bagged a research grant of more than ₹16 crore this academic year, besides receiving a grant of ₹11.5 crore through Anusadhan National Research Foundation of Department of Science and Technology under Partnership for Accelerated Innovation and Research (PAIR) programme.

“Additionally, the Department of Chemistry at CUK had received a dedicated grant of ₹1.67 crore for scientific infrastructure development under the Fund for Improvement of S&T Infrastructure (FIST) programme run by the department of Science and Technology, that aims at strengthening research and development in the university. The university secured a grant of ₹3 crore under Visvesvaraya PhD scheme for technology research work, and a grant of ₹1.21 crore for establishing a model self-sustained ecosystem under social corporate responsibility,” Prof. Satyanarayana said.

A dedicated sophisticated Instrumentation Centre has been established with an investment of ₹60 crore to build a strong research base at the university where state-of-the-art scientific research instruments are housed.

₹201.86 crore for infrastructure development

He reiterated that, along with the academic, research and innovation activities, the CUK is focused on infrastructure development too. Recently, the Ministry of Higher Education sanctioned a grant of ₹201.86 crore for construction of two academic blocks for Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Computer Science and Life Science departments; two hostels of 500-bed capacity each for girls and boys, and staff quarters.

The university has adapted learning outcome-based framework (LOCF) along with Integration of National Credit Framework (NCrF); National Higher Education Qualification Framework (NHEQF); Curriculum and Credit Framework for Undergraduate and Postgraduate Programmes focusing on complete implementation of National Education Policy 2020 into its programmes.

Recently, the CUK recruited 80 teaching and 50 non-teaching permanent staff taking the teaching staff strength to 175, and non-teaching to 100. However, 35 posts of teaching staff are vacant, Prof. Satyanarayana added.