Bhubaneswar: Holding a high-level meeting on functioning of Odisha State Open University (OSOU), Chief Secretary Pradeep Kumar Jena on Tuesday asked concerned officials to give emphasis on entrepreneur development courses in the University.
Shri Jena held the meeting here at Lok Seva Bhavan regarding the creation and recruitment of faculty and staff posts in Odisha Open State University.
Development Commissioner Anu Garg, Higher Education Principal Secretary Bishnupada Sethi, University Vice Chancellor, Ark Kumar Dasmohapatra, University Registrar, Manas Ranjan Pujari, Additional Secretary Finance, Shantanu Kumar Sahu and Higher Education Special Secretary Birendra Korkora attended the meeting.
According to Odisha State Open University Act-2014, the institute was set up at Sambalpur and in 2019, necessary amendments were made to this law and it has become a leading educational institution in the field of distance education.
Now, there are 90 study centers under the OSOU while 5 regional centers have been established in Balasore, Bhubaneswar, Sambalpur, Berhampur and Jeypore.
According to the University Grants Commission (UGC) Regulations-2020, steps are taken to create and fill up the required posts of teachers (professors) and staff in the university. The Chief Secretary examined the proposal submitted by the university to the Higher Education Department in this regard.
The University has Schools of Social Sciences and Humanities, School of Business and Management and School of Computer and Information Science, under which, Political Science, Odia, History, Economics, English, Psychology, Commerce, BBA and Cyber Security etc. courses are being offered.
There is a proposal for introduction of MBA and Post Graduate in Computer Science courses in the institute. Now more than 50,000 students from different districts are enrolled and studying in this open university.
In this context, the Chief Secretary has advised the university authorities to include Odisha’s heritage, culture, art etc. in the history curriculum.
Similarly, he emphasized to include courses related to employment-oriented entrepreneurship development.
Similarly, government grants and creation of corpus funds etc. were discussed for the development of the university.
After working as a police constable for 16 years, Lambodar Pradhan of Subarnapur district, joined OSOU and now he is a teacher at Shriram Degree College of Dunguripali block.
During the meeting, the CS and DC appreciated the success of Lambodar and expressed that it has inspired other students studying in Odisha State Open University.
It is to be noted that Pradhan started his service career as a police constable on 22nd December 2002 and after 16 years, studied at OSOU, he successfully joined as a lecturer after clearing the NET exam.
Similarly, this year, Arupananda Raut, Laxminarayan Majhi, Prabhati Dhal, Debashish Das, Sanjukta Mohanty, Anita Behera and Sujata Sethi from this university have qualified NET and obtained junior research fellowships.