Siliguri, March 9: After being given three stars five years ago, North Bengal University (NBU) is looking forward to make the top notch this time.

A four-member peer team of National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) will be on an inspection tour of the NBU campus from April 4-7 to re-assess the performance of the varsity on several parameters, including students? performance, infrastructure, organisation and management and student support and progression.

?Ours was the first university in the state to invite the NAAC to assess and grade us in 2000,? registrar T.K. Chatterjee said. ?Though we did not get a very high rating then, it gave us a chance to know where we stood. In keeping with NAAC rules, we have now invited the body to reassess and upgrade the accreditation and we are hopeful of an A+ rating this time.? Earlier NAAC used to give stars and not grades.

Chatterjee said the varsity is gearing up in all possible ways to face scrutiny of the NAAC members, all of whom are senior academicians from reputed universities across the country. ?A meeting has been called on March 13, in which various sub-committees will be formed to look after the preparations for the visit,? he added.

NAAC has a three-stage process of assessment and accreditation: preparation of a self-study report by the institution, its submission to NAAC and in-house analysis of the report by NAAC; peer team visit to the institution for validation of the self-study report; and grading, certification and accreditation based on the evaluation report by the peer team. ?The self-study report has already been sent to them,? Chatterjee said.

Established in 1962, the varsity began functioning with 16 colleges and six post-graduate departments only. Today, apart from 23 post-graduate departments and a dozen centres, there are more than 70 colleges under the university across the six districts of north Bengal and in Sikkim.