DU gets 15 new depts, accommodation for 6000 students in 15yr

Dhaka University witnessed a massive development in the last 15 years as 15 new departments, 30 research centers and one institute were launched with expanding digital services and increasing accommodation facilities for around 6000 students.

New accommodation facilities have been opened up for 6000 students, providing housing facilities to 400 teachers and 700 employees by establishing residential buildings, official sources said.

Country’s first university DU, once touted as the Oxford of the East for its structure, began its journey in 1921 with three faculties, 12 departments and three dormitories. But it has now 84 departments, 13 faculties, 13 institutes, 19 residential halls and at least 51 research centres.

Among these, 15 departments, one institute, two residential halls, 30 research centres were introduced in the last 15 years.

To facilitate student’s accommodation, two residential Halls- Bijoy 71 hall (2013), Kabi Sufia Kamal Hall (2012)-were built for the students with 1000 capacity each.

Apart from this, three multi storied extension buildings – 11 storied 7th March Bhaban at Ruqayyah Hall for 1000 students, Jagannath Hall’s 10 storied Santosh Chandra Bhattacharya Bhaban for 1000 students, Bangabandhu Hall’s 11 storied extension building for 1000 students-were constructed for students accomodation.

Even, some dormitory buildings including Ruqayyah Hall extension building No-2, and FH hall building were extended vertically to increase student’s accommodation.

To extend housing facilities for teachers, a number of projects were implemented including Munir Chowdhury Bhaban, provost complex, 12-storeyed 7 March House Tutor Building at Ruquyyah Hall, 12-storeyed building with ancillary facilities for Jagannath Hall teachers, 11-storeyed building with ancillary facilities for Bangabandhu hall house tutors.

Housing facilities for officials and employees were also developed by constructing multistoried buildings that include 20 storied Sheikh Russell Tower for officers, 12 storied Sheikh Kamal Tower for third class employees, 20 storied Bangabandhu Tower for fourth class employees, 10 storied residential building for employees at Azimpur and Shahed Abdul Khayer Bhaban.

Academic infrastructure development projects include 21 storied building for Earth and Environmental Science and Engineering faculties, 12 storied social science faculty building, 11 storied centres for advanced research in sciences building, Mukarram Hussain Khundker Science Building and separate building for soil, water and environment department.

Some academic buildings were also extended vertically which include Arts building, Science Annex Building, Lecture theatre building of fine arts faculty building, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology building, extension of fisheries studies department building and extended floor for geology department.

The departments introduced in the last 15 years are: Music (2009), Nuclear Engineering (2010), Education and Counseling department (2011), Television, Film, and Photography (2012), Criminology (2012), Oceanography (2012), Disaster science and management (2012), Dance (2014), Applied Mathematics (2014), Printing and Publication Studies (2015), Robotics (2015), Organization, Strategy and Leadership (2016), Meteorology (2016), Japanese Studies (2017), Theoretical and Computational Chemistry (2017), Public health (2023).

An institute named ‘Institute of Disaster management and vulnerability studies’ was opened while at least 30 research centres came out in this period.

Besides, running evening courses initiative has been boosted up rapidly as currently, 35 departments and institutes are running evening courses where outside of the regular students, over 7,000 students are admitted into various courses. And their classes are conducted by 725 teachers.

In the last 15 years, a series of automation programmes ranging from account automation, admission to exam processing, scholarships, transcript and marksheet, house allocation for employees, have been introduced, said Professor Asif Hossain Khan, Director of DU ICT Cell.

Some other developments were carried out including providing smart cards with multiple facilities for students, providing email to 5.5 thousand students, developing Dhaka University Apps and developing “Learning Management System” software titled “DUBDLMS” to avert any interruption of the university’s academic activities during any adverse situation, he said. (BSS)