would truly become an education city and a great place of learning.
Nowadays, the Garden Campus of AWKUM is a sight to behold as construction workers give the final touches to some buildings and the university administration making use of whatever has been built to shift the departments there from the old campus. The number of teachers and students has increased and made the Garden Campus a lively place. There is diversity in evidence as one can see girls with covered and uncovered faces. In the classrooms, boys sit on one side and the girls on the other as Mardan after all is still a conservative place. However, the number of girl students is steadily rising and according to the AWKUM Vice-Chancellor Professor Dr Ihsan Ali, they now form 38 percent of the total of more than 8,000 students in the university.
The enormity of the construction work at AWKUM could be gauged from the fact that the academic blocks would serve the needs of 38,400 students. There are 12 hostels under construction for 4,800 students. A central library equipped with the most modern facilities is almost ready and has space for 200,000 books.
A central research laboratory in which foreign faculty would join the AWKUM scholars to carry out research is also being built. A hostel for the foreign faculty is part of the master plan.
So is a cafeteria, an open theatre, swimming pool, community club, a shopping, media and medical centre, sports complex, residences for the faculty members, a university school and college, helipad and an auditorium able to accommodate 2,500 persons.
Then there would be the Pakhtunkhwa Study Centre. The Pakhtunkhwa College of Arts is already functional in its own dedicated building.
Dr Ihsan Ali is proud of the fact that AWKUM produced its first PhD in five years as in his view only a few universities would have made this achievement in such a short span of time.
He pointed out that AWKUM’s faculty include 136 PhDs and 111 who did MS and M Phil. He said currently 81
of his faculty members
were pursuing their PhDs in reputed universities all over the world, mostly in the Western countries, and another 58 were studying for their PhDs in major universities in Pakistan.
Another achievement that has made Dr Ihsan Ali proud is AWKUM’s contribution to create two independent universities in Charsadda and Swabi by developing the existing campuses that it had originally established there.
“In four years, we were able to develop our Palosa Campus in Charsadda to
become the Bacha Khan
University and the Anbar
Campus in Swabi district to grow into the University of Swabi,” he said.