Dr Jamil Anwar Chaudary, acting vice-chancellor of the university, announced this on Monday. He was addressing a joint meeting of the faculty and students of the institute also attended by Dr Shahida Hasnain, Faculty of Life Sciences dean, and Assistant Professor Dr Ghazala Naseem, head of the IMPP. Dr Chaudary said that the recommendations would be placed before the Academic Council of the university during a meeting next week.
He said that the issue would also be discussed with a Higher Education Commission (HEC) official scheduled to visit PU on May 26. Following the approval, the Institute of Mycology and Plant Pathology (IMPP)’s name would be changed to Institute of Plant Pathology (IPP). The bachelors’ and masters’ degree programmes of the institute would be renamed from BSc(hons.) and MSc(hons) in Mycology and Plant Pathology to BSc(hons) and MSc(hons) in Agriculture (Plant Pathology).
Dr Chaudary said that the institute would adopt HEC’s recommended curriculum for the new degrees. He said that the institute would also organise deficiency courses for current students as well as graduates to qualify them for the new degrees. He added that the graduates of the institute would have to complete a one-year deficiency course to acquire the new degrees. He said that the HEC curriculum would be adopted from 2010 academic session onwards.
Dr Chaudary told the audience that the recommendations would now be placed before the Academic Council during next week’s meeting. He said that the matter would also be discussed by a senior HEC representative who was scheduled to visit PU on May 26. The approval comes in the wake of a series of protests by the students of the institute complaining that the degrees issued by the institute were not recognised by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) as equivalent to a degree in agriculture and were consequently useless for the purposes of both further studies and employment.
Published in the Express Tribune, May 25th, 2010.
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