MADURAI: To meet the changing requirements of youth in a competitive educational environment, the Madurai-Kamaraj University (MKU) has introduced a well-structured course on yoga through distance education stream from this academic year.
The MKU vice-chancellor P. P. Chellathurai has been actively involved in designing the course for yoga studies at the undergraduate, postgraduate and diploma levels, displaying a rare commitment to Indian tradition and culture.
“While I had served as chairman of schools for youth empowerment in the university, I introduced Yoga course to impart our traditional knowledge to the students. Now I am introducing this course through distance education to make it available to more number of people,” Dr Chellathurai told DC here.
The VC also formed an expert committee to design skill-based diploma courses for construction workers and homemakers. Most of the dropouts in the rural areas were involved in construction work, but they lack technical expertise and ethical standards in the business. These semi-skilled construction workers have more job opportunities in Middle East countries. For homemakers, the expert committee would design a course on ‘child care’ incorporating various aspects such as parental care, child psychology, sociological and environmental factors in shaping child’s growth.
Dr Chellathurai, who recently held meeting with the programme officer of 86 MKU distance education centres functioning in the state in the campus, has also decided to increase the number of centres to 240 in this year. “We have decided to sign a memorandum of understanding with the standard colleges in every zone to facilitate students registered for science programme to attend their particular examination in those colleges,” said K. Kalaiselvan, director in-charge of the directorate of distance education.
