New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi got its first-ever woman Vice-Chancellor as the Education ministry appointed Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit to the position with M Jagadesh Kumar resigning to join as the UGC Chair.
She is currently a political science professor at the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Savitribai Phule University in Maharashtra. The 59-year-old Pandit is also an alumna of JNU where she pursued her MPhil as well as PhD in International Relations. Her thesis was on ' Parliament and Foreign Policy in India — The Nehru years'.
Pandit began her teaching career at Goa University in 1988 and moved to Pune University in 1993. She has held administrative positions in various academic bodies, including as a member of the Universities Grants Commission, and the Indian Council of Social Science Research.
In her career, she has guided 29 PhDs. In her maiden statement as the V-C, she said she would focus on providing a student-friendly, gender-sensitive environment for academic excellence and that "the immediate focus" would be to provide a "clean administration". She added that she was looking forward to working with the students and faculty of the varsity.