During the last five years, Kokrajhar Govt. College has been putting its consistent effort to create a congenial atmosphere in scientific research and development. The college has vowed to utilize its full potential in creating a scientific research hub. In this line, the college has encouraged as many as 10 faculty members to do minor research projects under UGC MRP Grants. The college has active research and publication committee to monitor the quality of research outcomes and their publications in various reputed journals. The college has been encouraging the newly recruited young and energetic faculty members to do dynamic research works in their fields by granting on duty leave and freeing them up from the hectic college work. Presently, the college has as many as 31 permanent faculty members with PhD degrees. More than 30 faculty members have been pursuing their PhD degrees at various universities. Consequently, the number of scientific publications in various highly reputed SCOPUS and SCI-indexed journals along with UGC CARES listed journals have been increasing year by year. During the last five years, more than 80 research papers have been published. The college authority has been extending financial grants to the faculty members to attend various conferences and seminars within India to promote the research activities of the faculty members.
The Department of Botany has been assigned as the nodal department to establish a botanical garden to preserve various indigenous medicinal plants and thereby to develop a research hub on these medicinal plants. Inside the garden, a fern house has also been established to preserve the variety of the fern species found in the forest reserve of Kokrajhar District. The department has been trying to discover the medicinal and nutritional values of mushrooms found in the forest area of this district. In this connection, the department has also conducted a training programme on mushroom cultivation. The college has already sanctioned an amount of Rs. 70,000/- to the department of Botany to do an in-house research project on aromatic medicinal plants of Chakrachila Wildlife Sanctuary.
There are five faculty members from the departments of Mathematics and Chemistry who have been assigned as PhD guides by Bodoland University to promote research activities of this college under this university. They have been participating in active research work by taking research scholars in various fields.
The Department of Chemistry has been taking an active role in groundwater quality management. In this connection, the Department has collected some groundwater samples from some places in Kokrajhar District to examine whether it is contaminated with arsenic or fluoride or not. Dr. Suresh Kr. Nath, Assistant Professor of this Department along with Prof. Robin Dutta of the Department of Chemistry of Tezpur University has developed a process for water quality management and for this development they have been patented by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, Govt. of India. Moreover, during the Covid 19 pandemic period, the department of Chemistry took an active role in preparing hand sanitisers before their availability in the market and made them available in the market commercially. Some training sessions were also conducted to train some NGO people to prepare hand sanitisers.
The Department of Physics is equipped with very good laboratories. The department has been taking a prevalent position in promoting scientific temperament among the students of the vicinity schools by inviting them to the laboratories and conducting various experiments in electricity and magnetism, various optical phenomena, astronomical phenomena etc. These types of activities encourage very pragmatic research and its development.
The Department of Bodo has been working incessantly for the upliftment of Bodo literary works. A magazine titled “Sonani Mala” is being published annually by the department since 2015 which helps the students as well as faculty members to publish their research articles. Moreover, the selected project works carried out by the students are also published in this magazine. The department received a grant from the local government and from the college authority to digitize all the literary works, published by the Kokrajhar College Bodo Students Literary Society, which is a very rich language archive in the Bodo Language referral section. A manuscript under the title “Phami” was published in book form in the year 2022 by the department to preserve and archive the 100 years old literary works composed by renowned poets in Bodo Language. The Department is also planning to establish a research cell. This cell would help directly in the field of research and development in the Bodo Language.
The college is going to establish an incubation centre for research and its development. This would help the faculty members to create a very good research environment and give them a platform to channel their research works systematically and scientifically.