Jawaharlal Nehru University

Jawaharlal Nehru University

Seal of the Jawaharlal Nehru University
Established 1969
Type Public
Chancellor Yash Pal
Vice-Chancellor Sudhir Kumar Sopory
Academic staff 550
Students 5000-5500
Location New Delhi, India
Campus Urban 1000 acres (4 km²)
Affiliations UGC
Website www.jnu.ac.in

Jawaharlal Nehru University, also known as JNU, is located in New Delhi, the capital of India. It is mainly a research oriented postgraduate University with approximately 5,500 students and a faculty strength of around 550.

Contents

History

The university was established in 1969 by an act of parliament. It was named after Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, and was founded by, Indira Gandhi (Nehru's daughter) with G. Parthasarathy as its first-Vice-Chancellor.

The objective of the founders was to make the university a premier institution of higher learning and to promote research and teaching leading to the increasing engagement of its students and teachers in higher level academic work and national and international policy making.

Schools

The University is organized into ten Schools, each of which has several Centers as well as four independent Special Centers:

  1. School of Arts and Aesthetics: This is one of the newest schools in the university.
  2. School of BioTechnology: This school was set up in 2006 from the earlier Center for Biotechnology.
  3. School of Computational and Integrative Sciences (earlier School of Information Technology[1]): This school offers M.Tech in Computational and Systems Biology, and pre-doctorate and doctorate courses in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. The department has two centers, Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics and High Performance Computing Center.
  4. School of Computer and Systems Sciences: Since its inception in 1974, this school has been attracting the largest number of applications as compared with the other schools.
  5. School of Environmental Sciences: Research into Remote sensing application in Geosciences, especially Groundwater and Earthquake forewarning and Sun-Earth connection. Other research includes: Environmental Biosciences, Ecology, Geomics, Glaciology, Chemistry, Cell Biology, Immunology,Pollution studies, Radiation Physics and Environmental Physics.
  6. School of International Studies: This is the oldest school. It predates the establishment of JNU as the Indian School of International Studies, which was set up in 1956. The centers in this school are the Center for Canadian, US and Latin American Studies, the Center for East Asian Studies, the Center for European Studies, the Center for International Legal Studies, the Center for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament Studies, the Center for International Trade and Development, the Center for Russian and Central Asian Studies, the Center for South, Central, Southeast Asian and Southwest Pacific Studies, the Center for West Asian & African Studies and the Group of Comparative Politics & Political Theory.
  7. School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies: This is the only school that offers undergraduate courses with several centers: the Center for Arabic and African Studies, the Center for Chinese and South East Asian Studies, the Center for French and Francophone Studies, the Center for German Studies, the Center of Indian Languages, the Center for Japanese Korean and North East Asian Studies, the Center for English Studies, the Center for Linguistics, the Center for Persian and Central Asian Studies, the Center for Russian Studies, the Center for Spanish, Portuguese, Italian & Latin American Studies.
  8. School of Life Science: This is one of the oldest schools.
  9. School of Physical Sciences: This school was formed in 1986 with a faculty in Physics and later added with faculties in Chemistry and Mathematics. The degree programs offered are M.Sc. (in Physics) and Ph.D. (in Physics, Chemistry or Mathematics). The different areas of research interests include Theoretical and Experimental Condensed Matter Physics, Soft-Matter Physics, Non-equilibrium Statistical Mechanics, Quantum Field Theory, Classical and Quantum Chaos, Low Temperature Physics, Materials Science, Supramolecular Chemistry, Ultrafast Laser Spectroscopy, as well as extensive computational facilities with a dedicated Nonlinear Dynamics laboratory.
  10. School of Social Sciences: It is the largest School (in terms of the number of faculty members) in JNU with 9 centres. The centers in this school include the Center for the Study of Regional Development, which is accredited as the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) by the University Grants Comminssion and is the premier center in the Field of (GEOGRAPHY), the Center for Economic Studies and Planning, [1], which is a premier institute in the field of economics, the Center for Historical Studies, which regularly brings out a reputed peer-reviewed journal entitled Studies in History, the Center for Philosophy, the Center for Political Studies, the Center for Studies in Science Policy, the Center for the Study of Social Systems, the Center of Social Medicine and Community Health, the Zakir Husain Center for Educational Studies,[2]

Special Centers

  1. Center for the Study of Law and Governance
  2. Center for Molecular Medicine
  3. Special Center for Sanskrit Studies
  4. Special Centre for Nano Sciences

Institutions affiliated to JNU

The following institutions are affiliated to JNU:[3]

Collaborators

The university has exchange programmes and academic collaboration through the signing of MoUs with 71 foreign universities around the world.[5] This list includes:

  1. Ankara University, Turkey
  2. Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
  3. George Washington University, USA
  4. Gyeongsang National University, Korea
  5. Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, France[6]
  6. King's College London, United Kingdom[7]
  7. Lancaster University, UK
  8. Moscow State University, Russia
  9. School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
  10. University of Cologne, Germany
  11. University of Heidelberg, Germany
  12. University of Strasbourg, France
  13. University of Illinois, USA
  14. University of North Carolina, USA
  15. University of the Philippines (system), Quezon City
  16. University of Sydney, Australia
  17. University of Essex, UK
  18. Yale University, USA
  19. NASA, USA
  20. Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland

Infrastructure

The JNU Campus

The university is an example of the new red brick universities built in the mid-twentieth century.

Located in the southern part of New Delhi and spread over an area of about 1000 acres (4 km²), the campus occupies some of the northernmost reaches of the Aravalli Hills. The campus still maintains large patches of scrub and forestland - the JNU ridge, home to over 200 species of birds and other wildlife such as, Indian Crested Porcupines, Common Palm Civet, jackals, mongoose, grizzly baers, exotic african tigers, peacocks as well as a large number of snakes.

The JNU library is a nine-storey building in the middle of the academic block of the university and is the tallest structure on the campus. It contains large collections of books, printed journals, newspapers and archives of primary sources. On the ground floor are the reading rooms, a section of the stacks, the library's collection of the back numbers of scholarly journals, computer terminals and a newspaper and journal section. The different floors are devoted to different subjects. The library also houses the P.C.Joshi Archives.

Modernization

The university has been modernizing itself by moving toward "paperless"[8] transparency and e-governance with the help of Wipro, and a wireless network to connect the students and the teachers to the library.

Students

Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU)

The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU) is primarily responsible for building and preserving a healthy political culture and an atmosphere of open debates on the campus.

Students are kept informed about the various public meetings, discussions and other issues through pamphlets and notices.

Public Action, an objective forum, invited a variety of journalists, politicians, and academics, to debate and discuss various topics.

There is a long tradition in JNU of holding serious post-dinner meetings in the hostels to which the students often invite well known public figures, writers and intellectuals.

Student activism

The university is known to have a long tradition of alumni that now occupy important political and bureaucratic positions (see: Prominent alumni) . This is in part due to the strong prevalence of left-centric student politics and the existence of a written constitution for the University to which noted Communist_Party_of_India_(Marxist) leader Prakash Karat contributed exhaustively during his education at J.N.U.[2] However, on October 24, 2008 the Supreme Court of India had stayed the JNU elections and banned the JNUSU for not complying with the recommendations of the Lyngdoh committee [3] . After a prolonged struggle and multi-party negotiations, the ban was lifted on December 8, 2011. [4]

Foreign Students' Association

The Foreign Students’ Association (FSA) is an official Jawaharlal Nehru University body. It was instituted in 1985 with a view to promoting friendly relations and cultural exchange. The FSA has a constitution and elected executive, cultural, advisory and financial committees. All foreign students of JNU are also members of the FSA.

FSA conducts Language and Culture classes free of charge for JNU students, including Japanese, German, English, Arabic, Hindi and Urdu classes with the help of FSA members and students. In addition, the group organizes tours, picnics and heritage trips are organized. The group organizes an International Film Festival at which films from different counties are screened. “Thursday Forum” is the discussion session held in FSA for foreign students for discussions around different issues and topics.

Cultural Activities

The university has 9 cultural clubs: the Drama Club, Music Club, Film Club, Fine Arts Club, Photography Club, Literary Club, Debating Club, UNESCO Club and Nature & Wildlife Club. Other cultural groups: IPTA (Indian Peoples’ Theatre Association), Bahroop Arts Group, Orissa Sanskrutika Parishad(OSP), Wings Cultural Society. Wings Cultural Society is very active now a days at cultural front like Theatrical activities, performing plays, painting exhibition, Literary seminars and symposiums etc.

Programs are organized by the Convenor and the members of the respective club.

Annual events

SFH - Students for Harmony started in 1997 in JNU organises cultural events throughout the year. Tastopia, the world food festival, Ahimsa Day blood donation camp on 30 January, Talents - the inter-hostel festival, Madhurima, the folk songs and dance programme, Oceania, an international cultural evening, Imprint - the handicrafts exhibition, dignitaries lecture series are some of the events.

Hostels

The residential character of JNU is an important component of the intellectual and cultural life of the campus. There are 17 residences (hostels), including one for married students. Of the 17 residences, 7 for men, while 5 for women and 4 have mixed wings for women and men.

Sports

There are various sports clubs in the university. The practice sessions are organised by the convenor with help of the Sport Office, which provides the necessary kit and other sport equipments. All the clubs organise annual tournaments in the winter semester. There are three main venues where the following games are played:

Notable alumni

Notable faculty

See also

References

  1. ^ School of Computational and Integrative Sciences. http://www.jnu.ac.in/main.asp?sendval=SchoolOfComputationalandIntegrativeSciences
  2. ^ JNU (1997) Silver Jubilee Commemoration Volume; A Profile of School of Social Sciences, New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University
  3. ^ Institutions affiliated to JNU
  4. ^ National Institute of Plant Genome Research
  5. ^ Global Presence of JNU http://www.jnu.ac.in/main.asp?sendval=GlobalPresence#
  6. ^ List of Foreign universities which signed MOU for collaboration with JNU http://www.jnu.ac.in/Academics/MoU%20complete%20list.htm
  7. ^ "About King's College London : News and What's On : King's College London". Kcl.ac.uk. 2008-12-09. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/news_details.php?news_id=966&year=2008. Retrieved 2011-05-02. 
  8. ^ "JNU all set to go `paperless' ", The Hindu, 28 October 2006 [On-line] http://www.hindu.com/2006/10/25/stories/2006102519390300.htm
  9. ^ "OSP Souvenir ‘Utkal Dhara’ Released, Orissa Event Diary". Orissadiary.com. 2006-08-25. http://www.orissadiary.com/ShowEvents.asp?id=2888. Retrieved 2011-05-02. 
  10. ^ "Utkal Diwas celebration at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Orissa Event Diary". Orissadiary.com. 2009-04-06. http://www.orissadiary.com/ShowEvents.asp?id=11909. Retrieved 2011-05-02. 

External links

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