With his open door policy, engaging distinguished faculty and academic tie-ups with various reputed national and international universities, Vice- Chancellor Ashok Aima is working hard to get rid of the stigma of “non-performing university” that has been attached to the Central University of Jammu (CUJ).

Prof. Aima is perhaps the first full-time academician VC that the CUJ has got after it started functioning seven years ago on 8 August 2011.

Among the several challenges faced by Prof. Aima is constructing the academic blocks and approach road to the campus in Samba district which is nearly 8 km inside from the Jammu-Pathankot highway. For the VC it was like beginning from scratch as the priorities were wrongly fixed in the past. Work on the approach road is now progressing fast.

CUJ figured among the 11 universities that were last year declared as “non-performing universities” by the Human Resource Development Ministry. The focus of Prof. Aima now is to rid the varsity of that tag by streamlining functioning of the university.

Prof. Aima says the CUJ in a short span of time has been able to carve a niche for itself at regional as well at national levels. The campus in 2011 had just three post-graduate courses and one research programme but now the university is offering 45 programmes: 16 postgraduate, 20 research-oriented, 4 five year degree, 1 four year integrated, and 2 vocational types at the undergraduate level under the aegis of 13 departments. One diploma course each is being offered by the community college and yoga centre.

Recently, the university succeeded in establishing the Satish Dhawan Centre for Space Science with generous funding from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The “Swami Dayanand Saraswati Chair” has been sanctioned by the UGC.

Among other courses, Environmental Sciences, Travel and Tourism Management and National Security Studies are quite relevant. In another notable achievement, the Department of Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour has been notified as National Resource Centre by Ministry of HRD under the Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya National Mission on Teachers and Teaching (PMMMNMTT).

At present more than 1200 students from across the length and breadth of the country are registered for various academic and research programmes in various disciplines.

Prof Aima has succeeded in saving an amount of more than Rs 1 crore per annum by shifting from a rented building to the main campus at Rahya Suchani in Samba district. Despite various constraints, the university has succeeded in providing to the students all basic facilities and requirements necessary for promoting the teaching-learning process.

The university has witnessed significant increase in the number of applicants opting for the various programmes offered which is testimony to the hard work put in by the teaching fraternity of CUJ during the last few years. In 2014-2015 only about 2798 applications for admission were received.

The number increased to 23,400 in 2017-18 and it has gone up to 30,000 in 2018-19. The university is part of the collegium of ten Central universities which conduct admission entrance testa.

The university has also been successful in attaining an all-India character by admitting students and research scholars across diverse regions of the country.