New Delhi: Jamia Millia Islamia(JMI) Vice-Chancellor Prof. Najma Akhtar received Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award of the country, from the Hon’ble President of India Shri Ramnath Kovind at a ceremony held at the Darbar Hall of the Rashtrapati Bhavan on March 21, 2022. The government of India(GoI) selected her for the award for her invaluable contribution to literature and education.
Prof. Akhtar is the first woman Vice-Chancellor of JMI-an institution accredited with A++ by the National Accreditation and Assessment Council(NAAC) in December 2021. She is widely recognized as a leading educationist for having brought transformation in the delivery of quality education in premier educational institutions of the country.
Prof. Akhtar led JMI to bag 6th rank in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) of the Ministry of Education(MoE), GoI. Under her leadership, the university also achieved outstanding performance by securing a 95.23 percent score among all central universities in a performance evaluation done by the Ministry of Education for the year 2019-20.
Born on November 13, 1953, Prof. Najma Akhtar received her Ph.D. in Education on “A Comparative Study on Conventional & Distance Education System of Higher Education.” A gold medalist in her Master’s, she holds M.A. in Education and M.Sc. in Botany.
She has worked as Professor and was the Head of the Department of Training & Capacity Building in Education at the National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), New Delhi. She worked in the Distance Education Programme at IGNOU, New Delhi. She was the Founder Director of the State Institute of Educational Management and Training (SIEMAT) at erstwhile Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh. She has also held the position of Director, Academic Programmes at Aligarh Muslim University(AMU), besides the coveted position of Controller of Examinations and Admissions in AMU.
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