The University of Pune (formerly the University of Poona) is a university located in northwest Pune. It has a 400 acre (1.6 km²) campus. It was established on February 10, 1949 and is home to 46 academic departments.

History

The university was established under the Poona University Act , passed by the Bombay legislature on February 10, 1948. In the same year, Dr. M.R. Jayakar assumed office as the first vice chancellor of the university. Shri B.G. Kher, Chief Minister and Education Minister of the government of Bombay, helped ensure the university received a large allocation of land for their campus. In early 1950, the university was allocated over 411 acres (1.7 km²).

Jurisdiction

Initially the university had a jurisdiction extending over 12 districts of western Maharashtra. However, with the establishment of Shivaji University in Kolhapur in 1964, the jurisdiction of the university was restricted to 5 districts, namely Pune, Ahmednagar, Nasik, Dhule and Jalgaon. Out of these, two districts -- Dhule and Jalgaon -- are attached to the North Maharashtra University established in August 1990.

Affiliations

In 1949, there were only 18 colleges affiliated to the university, with an enrollment of over 8000 students. Thereafter, the number of colleges increased, and in 2004, the university had 46 graduate departments, 269 affiliated colleges and 118 recognized research institutions, with an enrollment of 1,70,000 students for both the undergraduate and graduate courses in different faculties.

Research

70 research institutions have been recognized by the University for research. These include institutions of national importance like the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), MACS, CWPRS, NIV, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Deccan College among others. Other erstwhile Research organisation which are located in the University of Pune are

• IUCAA,Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics
• National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (which runs the GMRT)
• Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), home to the PARAM range of supercomputers
• The Bioinformatics Centre,University of Pune

External link

• Official website of the University of Pune