Punjab University Vice Chancellor Mujahid Kamran on Wednesday inaugurated new the undergraduate building at the Department of English Language and Literature.
Chairperson Amra Raza, former chairpersons Razi Abedi, Shaista Sonnu Sirajuddin and Nasim Riaz Butt were also present.
Other guests included Professor Naveed Shahzad, Musarrat Abid, Rahat Naveed Masud, Mansoor Sarwar and Tahira Basharat. Faculty members and a large number of students were also present.
Addressing the ceremony, Kamran advised students to develop reading habits.
“No nation can prosper without knowledge,” he said.
Dr Amra Raza said the department had seen several changes over the last two-and-half years.
She said PhD and MPhil rooms had been constructed and four multimedia projectors had been installed.
She said career counselling and skill development sessions had been made available for students.
She said five teachers had enrolled in the PhD programme of the department. She said the department had hosted a national computer-assisted language teaching workshop in collaboration with the HEC and hosted numerous talks by foreign scholars.
She said the Journal of Research (Humanities) was now an indexed and abstracted journal and its editorial board had been expanded to include many foreign university specialists.
“I envision the department having a four-year bachelors’ programme, a one-year evening MA in creative writing and an MS in linguistics,” she said.
She said the new block would help the department start evening short courses such as IELTS courses and conduct examinations for the teachers knowledge test (TKT).
Raghab Naeemi appointed Syndicate member:
The governor on Wednesday nominated religious scholar Muhammad Raghab Hussain Naeemi as member of Punjab University Syndicate with immediate effect for a period of three years. A notification has been issued in this regard.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 17th, 2014.