LAHORE: Institute of Business and Management (IM&B) of the University of Engineering and Technology (UET) on Saturday had to withdraw a notification of dress code for its students after the notification went viral on media.

According to the dress code, which was to be implemented from March 11, besides other instructions the female students were not allowed to wear skinny jeans and sleeveless shirts while dupatta or scarf was made compulsory while for boys shalwar qameez was made compulsory on Fridays. The punishment for violation included a Rs 5,000 fine besides no permission to attend the class that day.

When contacted UET-IB&M Director Prof Dr Muhammad Shoaib said it was a business institute and the idea was to groom the students about formal dressing. He, however, said the dress code did not receive good feedback owing to which it had been withdrawn. “We will be planning to ask students for formal dressing at least once a week or so,” he said while explaining with the provision of business education, knowledge about formal dressing to the students was equally important to compete with graduates in the market. That was why we had suggested dress pant/shirt and shalwar qameez with waist coat/coat for male students, he added.

ITU to launch new department: The launch of Computer Engineering (CE) department at the Information Technology University (ITU) will cater the needs of the industry and the academia.

Dr Niaz Ahmad Akhtar, Acting Vice-Chancellor ITU, said this on approval of the department in the 9th meeting of the ITU Syndicate.

Addressing the meeting, Dr Niaz said the Information Technology University aimed to educate the next generation of innovators, engineers and scientists to develop technologies to drive the country’s economic growth and to focus on resolving local problems with an emphasis on research and entrepreneurship for socio economic development.

The meeting lauded the promotion skilled education in the field of computer science and engineering. The meeting also approved the revised budget estimates for 2018-19 and the arrangements of the second convocation being held on Wednesdayat 10am at Aiwan-e-Iqbal.

Chaudhry Sarwar, Governor Punjab, will preside over the ceremony while members of ITU Syndicate and Registrar Zaheer Sarwar will attend the convocation.

Honoured: Punjab University (PU) Department of Space Science’s Assistant Prof Dr Khalid Mahmood has been selected as principle investigator from Pakistan under the PAK-TURK Research Mobility Grant programme for the development of satellite based environmental indices.

The programme is one of the outcomes of Turkish-Pakistani cooperation within the scope of internationalisation of higher education. Under this programme new scientific and technological cooperation between the two countries will be developed by supporting mobility of graduate students and academic staff.

The proposal submitted by Dr Mahmood has been selected after the deliberations and evaluations on the basis of scientific quality and impacts on economy and society of the project. In addition to that research track, suitability and complementarities of principle investigator have also been considered.

Under this project Punjab University’s researchers associated with Dr Mahmood will be able to accomplish their research work in counterpart Turkish university with fully funded mobility grant. Researchers from the Turkish university will also come to PU to learn latest developments within the scientific domain of the project.

Dr Khalid said with the successful initiation of this programme, other departments of the university would also get benefits of similar kind of students and teachers exchange and funding in future.