The upcoming Dheerpur campus of Dr B R Ambedkar University Delhi will provide a modern, student-centric learning environment and help address long-standing space constraints, Vice Chancellor Anu Singh Lather said here.
In an interview, Lather said the project, recently approved by the Delhi government at an estimated cost of Rs 1,668 crore, had been in the pipeline for several years but had now gathered momentum following the new government’s approval.
“The earlier estimate for the Dheerpur campus was around Rs 1,199 crore,” she said, adding that after the Public Works Department revised the estimates, considering several factors, the total project cost estimate, as approved, has gone up by a significant amount.
She said the university had already finalised the architectural designs for both its proposed Dheerpur and Rohini campuses, although construction would begin with Dheerpur first.
“The government has been very fast in taking decisions. The chief minister and the education minister were very keen that the project should finally see the light of the day,” she said.
Lather said the new campus would be designed around the principles of collaborative and student-centred learning envisioned under the National Education Policy (NEP).
“It will have modern infrastructure, technology-enabled teaching-learning spaces, collaborative work areas, open discussion zones and co-learning spaces where students can meet, deliberate and innovate. We believe higher education has to become student-centric,” she said.
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The VC said space limitations had restricted the university’s expansion despite being among the early institutions to implement several provisions of the NEP.
“We had limited space in our existing campuses. With the new land, we finally have the opportunity to build a futuristic university with updated infrastructure,” she said.
While no formal completion deadline has been fixed, Lather said she expected construction to be completed in around three years, subject to timelines finalised by the PWD.
The vice chancellor said the university’s student strength had grown significantly over the past few years, making infrastructure expansion imperative.
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“In 2019, the university had an effective strength of around 2,400 students across three campuses. Today we have about 6,300 students across four campuses, and with the introduction of one-year postgraduate programmes and expansion of PhD admissions, the number is expected to reach nearly 7,000 by the end of this year,” she said.
To ease capacity constraints, the university recently added a new academic block at its Karampura campus with 18 classrooms, faculty rooms and seminar halls, she added.
On academic reforms, Lather said the university had introduced one-year postgraduate programmes in seven disciplines on an experimental basis this academic session.
“The response has largely mirrored the popularity of our existing programmes. Psychology has emerged as the most preferred one-year programme, followed by Economics and English. These have traditionally been our flagship courses and continue to attract strong demand because of their employment prospects,” she said.
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She said admissions to the one-year postgraduate courses were open to graduates from all universities who had completed a four-year undergraduate programme, and were not restricted to AUD students.
“If justice has to be done to society at large, opportunities must be open to everyone. Students from other universities are welcome to apply, and admissions will continue to be merit-based,” she said.
Highlighting the university’s focus on research, Lather said AUD had consciously shifted its academic culture towards publishing in internationally indexed journals.
“When I joined, I realised that much of the work in humanities and social sciences was going into book chapters or general writing rather than peer-reviewed research publications. We developed an ecosystem that encouraged publication in Scopus and Web of Science-indexed journals,” she said.
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According to Lather, the university’s institutional h-index, which measures an institution’s research impact, has risen from zero in 2019 to around 30-32 currently.
She said the university had also introduced annual faculty research awards to incentivise quality research.
“In the first year, only a handful of faculty members qualified for these awards. Last year, almost 52 teachers received research awards in different categories, reflecting both the improvement in quality and the increase in research output,” she said.
The university has also doubled its PhD fellowship from Rs 8,000 to Rs 16,000 per month to encourage student research, she added.
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Lather said artificial intelligence had already been integrated into the university’s curriculum at both introductory and advanced levels in selected programmes.
“We started preparing for AI nearly five years ago. Experts from IIT Kharagpur, Netaji Subhas University of Technology and industry were invited to guide our faculty on how AI could be meaningfully integrated into humanities and social sciences,” she said.
She said that while AI would play an increasingly important role in higher education, its application would need to be guided carefully, particularly in disciplines dealing with human and social issues.