Durgapur Women’s College

Durgapur Women’s College had been established as the first women’s Degree College with the express aim of educating girl students living in the vicinity of the Steel City of Durgapur. The establishment of the College was the outcome of a project hment of the College was the outcome of a project taken up by the DNAA (now Durgapur Municipal Corporation). The foundation stone of the College was laid on 5th April, 1981 by the then Hon’ble Chief Minister of West Bengal, Sri Jyoti Basu. However, the College had already started functioning from the academic session of 1980, holding classes in the evening at David Hare Primary School, B-Zone, Durgapur. Durgapur Women’s College started functioning from its own premises on Mahatma Gandhi Road from 1982. From the very beginning the Mission and Objective of Durgapur Women’s College has been “Empowering Women”. In its thirty-six years of existence, the College has been continuously expanding its academic horizons. At the time of its inception, the College was affiliated to the University of Burdwan for imparting instruction in BA Pass course only. From the academic session of 1984-85, the College began imparting instruction in B.Sc Pass course as well. Honours courses in various subjects were introduced from the session of 1986-87. At present the College offers BA Honours courses in five subjects—Bengali, English, History, Political Science and Sanskrit and B.Sc Honours courses in four subjects—Chemistry, Computer Science, Mathematics and Physics. It offers General courses (under the annual system) and Generic Elective and Programme courses (under the semester system) in Economics, Philosophy, Hindi, Electronics and also all the subjects which run Honours courses, except Computer Science. Education is the basis of all empowerment. However, without economic empowerment the ideal of social empowerment for women becomes difficult to achieve. Without a basic academic degree, the clarion call for women’s empowerment often becomes meaningless. Hence one of the prime aims of Durgapur Women’s College is to impart sound graduate level instruction to girl students. Mere course-work, though, cannot completely prepare a woman to take on the mantle of responsibility in the working world. She has to be imbued with transferable and marketable skills as well. The College, therefore, provides various opportunities to students to add these skills on along with their graduation studies. The Entry in Services Cell of the College offers courses designed to prepare the students for various competitive examinations and also organizes campus recruitment drives. The basic computer literacy course and the course in Spoken and Communicative English are also specially designed to cater to the needs of the contemporary job market. Along with these, character and personality development are equally important adjuncts to the academic career of the student. Extra and co-curricular activities are therefore an integral part of the calendar of activities of the College. Durgapur Women’s College aims to transform the young girls of today into women of substance who will be able to lead tomorrow’s world with confidence, courage and conviction. Acquisition of knowledge leads to emancipation. This is more pertinent for us as ours is a women’s college. Education is the basis of all empowerment. The visionary founders of the College were rightly convinced that formal education often serves as the basis of all other forms of empowerment, be it in the family, society, or the economy. From its very inception the Mission and Objective of Durgapur Women’s College has been “Empowering Women”. Thus, the College has ceaselessly attempted to provide holistic education to its students, so that at the end of their course, they emerge as competent, confident and responsible individuals, duly equipped to face an increasingly competitive and complex world on their own. With this vision in mind, we encourage our students to actively participate in NCC and the various social outreach programmes taken on by the College.