USJP celebrates its Diamond Jubilee Commemorating History and forging ahead with Zeal

At its 60th jubilee, the distinguished University of Sri Jayawardenepura (USJP) celebrates an historic 145-year journey of serving the people of Sri Lanka. Amidst the milestone celebrations in special programmes planned for the following months, the occasion allowed a moment to view the university’s evolution, endeavours and ambitions.   

Historical Significance

The University was initially established in 1873 as the Vidyodaya Pirivena by Ven. Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala Thera at Maligakanda. The ‘Pirivena’ was built in order to continue the Maha Vihara traditions which inaugurated during the reign of King Devanampiyatissa, thus revealing that the University’s history in fact dates far beyond belief. The University has been the essence of the revival of Sri Lankan Education. It is the second oldest University in Sri Lanka and the first University established in Independent Ceylon. Through the centuries, while evolution and development have been evident, the values and traditions embed by its founders have passed on through the generations.   

Present Day

Having arrived at this milestone, Prof. Sampath Amaratunge, the Vice Chancellor (VC) of the USJP proudly described the array of projects both completed and underway, ensuring value addition to the nation.   

“Entrepreneurship must be coupled with invention. Without creativity there is no entrepreneurship. So as a university we have given the prominent place to inventions. We have planned this for several years and started a fully-fledged research council. It now has nearly 25 research centres.”   

Within a span of four years, the council has spent over Rs. 400 billion to carry out its objectives to promote research. Owing to the multitude of new ideas that erupted as a result of it, the university then set up the IIVCC (Invention Innovation Venture Creation Council). Combining the university’s diverse faculties which include humanities, applied sciences, management, medicine, engineering, technology, allied health sciences etc, a combined panel was formed to screen proposals, fund and follow up the staff and students’ inventions.   

“In our subject matter we lack the element of invention. We are simply teaching and checking how well they memorized what was taught. This is totally different,” Prof. Amaratunge quipped.   
Reaching global levels of excellence, the council then started sponsoring the students to compete abroad. He referred to innovations that have even secured top places internationally. Prof. Amaratunge expressed that in light of the current negativity focused toward local universities, it is important to highlight successes:   

“Public universities are criticized by the society all the time. The disturbance to the public and the disturbance to first years are the main two allegations. We cannot suffer this anymore. Rules, regulations and regulators exist, but despite its reduction we have not eliminated this view.”  

He continued; “We produce first classes, Olympic athletes, inventors, entrepreneurs and scientists, but today society won’t talk about these things.”   

With the goal of accentuating victories and recording the development of education over history, the University plans to showcase nearly 130 inventions from all faculties at “Innovate Sri Lanka”- an Invention and Innovate Competition and Exhibition on April 2, 2019 at the Sirimavo Bandaranaike Memorial Hall.

The next step down this path according to Prof. Amaratunge is a Business Council that will allow the private sector of the country opportunities to work with the university and develop seeds of innovation into their full potential. This council is to also be formed during the exhibition.   

 Yet another inestimable project undertaken by the University is the collection and technological preservation of historical literary documents which contain indigenous information.   
“We are competing globally with modern technology, but we disregard the wisdom cultivated and recorded in ‘puskola poth’ (ola leaf books) thousands of years ago. These books contain expansive knowledge on various topics still unknown to us,” Prof. Amaratunge explained.   

The University advertised on newspapers their request for anyone possessing such historic materials to kindly hand them over to the University library. The SJPU library has allocated a separate section and trained a staff for the preservation of these books. Among the then received books was also an original of the great ‘Saddharmarathnavaliya.’ The project will also restore and reprint the invaluable literature of Ven. Sumangala and Soratha Theras for public reference. The next foreseeable step is the digitalization of the contents of these books. They also plan to scan and digitalize the ‘puskola poth’ currently preserved in England. 

Conquering Challenges

“If you come to a position and you are insensitive to society, it will be a disaster. Once you become a VC, if you cannot understand the feeling of hunger, you cannot run hostels. You don’t have to experience it personally, but you must understand the difficulty of studying in such conditions…. I speak to each and every person, it is then that I finish my day. With nearly 14,000 undergraduates, I am living with youth who have millions of problems. They don’t have options, their final resort is me. And I am willing and waiting for them,” the VC expressed.   

“SJPU with the largest student community within very small premises has always been very sensitive to student issues,” Prof. Amaratunge expressed, adding how the administration plays a major role in this respect.   

“We had a very old hostel accommodating nearly 160 students and I came to know that only four plug points were available in this entire building. You can imagine the students’ unrest. We have rewired the section and installed new plug points in each hostel room,” he stated.   

“Without giving the fundamentals for living how can we expect thousands of undergraduates to remain in these hostels? So we have imported containers full of fans and fixed them. We have a special consultant doctor working here to avoid diseases like Dengue, we have maintained sick rooms, we provide medicine etc. During the Dengue epidemic we spent millions providing vapourizers for our students,” he described macro level welfare issues that were recognized and resolved.   

I speak to each and every person, it is then that I finish my day. With nearly 14,000 undergraduates, I am living with youth who have millions of problems. They don’t have options, their final resort is me. And I am willing and waiting for them

“Those who did not have hostel facilities never left the hostel since they had nowhere else to go. These are the poorest of the poor. So we have expanded hostel facilities by 60% within the last four years…Sometimes the room only accommodated four people, but students slept on and under tables, without fans, without desk space,” Prof. Amaratunge said about the struggles he had witnessed.   

In response, the University has rented 44 buildings around it and given those students the needed relief.   

The university also opens its library at 5.00 am. It has been modernized and those who don’t own laptops can get one by providing their student ID at the entrance. The VC added that USJP is the only university to provide this facility. Maximum efforts to maintain an environment where a student is not deviated from his/her goals are have supposedly been exerted.   
Being an alumnus himself, Prof. Amaratunge, shared his own story with the Daily Mirror expressing the inspiration behind his vision for the university. Having his degree stretched out into seven years owing to civil strife, he was determined to prevent his own students from undergoing such setbacks. The value of education is one deeply embedded in his tale, thus personally motivating his administrative strategies.   

Plans and Visions moving Forward

In honour of the 60th anniversary, the USJP has organized a myriad of events including “Human Library”, the “Innovate Sri Lanka” exhibitions, the staging of “Sandeshawali Kawinaluwa”, a “Health is Wealth” medical camp, symposiums and research publications. The detailed programme with dates, times and venues are available on the USJP website for public perusal. 

Entrepreneurship must be coupled with invention. Without creativity there is no entrepreneurship 

Beyond this milestone, the university looks towards to the future with ambition and progress. When asked about his vision, Prof. Amaratunge simply stated, “What our founders set down as values, we do not want to change. We want to keep them alive. They wanted to expand education and we are doing that. We are an almost complete university with all study areas, we are parallel with national objectives, and we very much help the government to expand university entrance, research and invention.”