President to address Mata Vaishno Devi University Convocation

Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Mar 20: Rashtrapati Bhavan has communicated to Raj Bhavan that Ram Nath Kovind, President of India, has accepted the Governor’s request to be the chief guest and address the next Convocation of Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University on 18th April, 2018.
Governor Vohra had called on the President about a month earlier and requested him to address the next Convocation of this University.
Pertinent to recall that this fully residential University, established in 1999 by Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board, founded on the academic and residential pattern of IITs, was inaugurated in 2004 by Dr Abdul J. Kalam, President of India, who also took the first class in this institution.
The earlier Convocations of this University have been addressed by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh; Pratibha Devisingh Patil, President of India; Dr Narayan Murthy, Chairman Infosys; Mohammad Hamid Ansari, Vice President of India; and the last Convocation, in 2016, was addressed by Narendra Modi, Prime Minister.
This University has about 1675 residential students who hail from 24 States of the country, from Kerala to Kashmir and Meghalaya to Gujarat. It provides facilities for studies at the undergraduate, postgraduate and Ph.D levels in the fields of Engineering, Science, Management, Architecture, Humanities and Philosophy.
In 2016 and 2017 this young University was ranked among the Top 150 Universities of the country. Last year it was selected for inclusion in the World Bank assisted Technical Education Quality Improvement Program which is administered by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development.