Dibrugarh University on Thursday conferred degrees on 10,450 including students during its 17th convocation programme organized here.
Vice Chancellor Alak Kumar Buragohain and the Chief Guest of the programme, Padma Bhushan Padmanabham Balaram, a former Director of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, presented the degrees in the absence of Assam Governor Jagadish Mukhi, who is the Chancellor of the university.
The university conferred the prestigious D Litt degree (honoris causa) to noted author Arup Kumar Dutta. A renowned author in English, Dutta was chosen for this year’s Padma Shri award along with two others from Assam. He has penned over 30 books and among his famous ones include the Cha Garam: The Tea Story, The Roving Ministrel, Kaziranga Trails, Unicornis: The Great Indian One-Horned Rhinoceros, The Brahmaputra and The Ahoms.
As many as 57 received PhD degrees while 62 received their MPhil degrees. The other disciplines in which degrees were conferred included MA (683), MSc (211), MCom (108), BA (5,590), BSc (1489) and BCom (995). The university also conferred degrees to students of Law, Performing Arts, Management, Engineering and Technology, Library and Information Science, Pharmaceutical Science, Computer Science and Information Technology.
Earlier, students and academicians attired in colourful robes and scarves took out a procession to the convocation venue.
In his welcome address, Dibrugarh University Vice Chancellor Alak Kumar Buragohain spoke about the progress made by the university in various fields since its inception in 1965. He said, “While Dibrugarh University has come a long way since its inception, it has to keep pace with the changing needs and expectations of the society. It has to successfully perform the multiple roles of creating new knowledge, acquiring new capabilities and producing an intelligent human resource pool for the promotion of economic growth, cultural development, social cohesion, equity and justice. I am happy to state that the NAAC has accredited our university with the A Grade in its third cycle of assessment in 2017. The university has been ranked amongst the top 100 universities of the country by the NIRF in its last two rankings of the higher education institutes.”
In his address, Chief Guest Padma Bhushan Padmanabham Balaram said, “In our system of education, success is celebrated and failure derided. However, in the wider world of employment and careers, failure is commonplace. In research, failure is more abundant than success and I can personally testify to this fact. Two qualities that more than others allow us to move on beyond failure are resilience and imagination.”
Balaram added, “Resilience allows us to be persistent in our endeavours and not be disheartened by failure. Imagination allows to us to find the avenues that make us happy. I hope that all of you will meet with great success in future and that in reaching your individual goals all of you will also be blessed with both resilience and imagination.”