Specific functions that are to be carried out by the Staff Development Centre

• To design and conduct mandatory in-service, induction training programmes for all new recruits of academic and non-academic categories thereby ensuring that new employees are fully aware of a university's institutional and organizational arrangement, pertinent acts, ordinances, by-laws, rules and regulations, administrative and financial management procedures, office management procedures and university norms and culture, recruitment, confirmation and promotion procedures, codes of practice and ethics, disciplinary procedures, punishments and appeal procedures, personality development and etiquette, social and ethnic cohesion and harmony, and in general what the University offers to the employees and what the University expects in return from the employees.
• To design and conduct training programmes to improve teaching and training and evaluation skills of academics aimed at improving academic skills in conventional instructional and modern ITC-based teaching and learning techniques and tools.
• To provide training and also advisory services to academics, academic departments and faculties/ institutes/ centers in curricular development and reforms and development of course material (i.e. qualification descriptors of degree/ diploma programmes, intended learning outcomes of courses, course contents and lecture designs, methods of teaching and training, etc.)
• To design and provide training for all categories of staff aiming at improving technical and professional skills in relevant core areas in collaboration with the HRDU and the STC of UGC.
• To design and provide training to higher management, academic administrators and executive staff in organizational management, and institutional, sectoral and national development, in collaboration with the HRDU and STC of UGC.
• To design and conduct continuing educational programmes for all categories of staff in liaison with the Career Guidance Unit to improve generic skills (or soft skills) thereby to ensure continuing improvement in their personal traits such as etiquette, allegiance and commitment to the institution, interpersonal relations and interaction, team efforts, etc.
• To design and offer, in partnership with ELTU and Department of Sinhala and Tamil Language, training programmes to all categories of staff to acquire necessary competencies in English and the national languages Sinhala and Tamil.
• To design and conduct IT literacy training programmes, in collaboration with IT Centres, for all categories of staff to acquire required IT skills.
• To arrange and coordinate tailor-made certificate/ diploma level training courses designed on the basis of the identified needs for all categories of staff (eg. IT Literacy, e-learning, English, Laboratory Sciences, etc) that are to be designed and conducted by specialized Schools/ centres/ units (such as Centres of Open and Distance Learning/ Centres of Distance and Continuing Education, English Language Training Units and Information Technology Centres of established universities, School of Computing in Colombo University, and Open University of Sri Lanka.
• To undertake publications in the areas of university staff development in general and teaching and learning in particular, to be used within the University and other institutions of higher learning.
• To develop linkages among domestic and foreign Universities and national and international developmental organizations with similar objectives.
• To raise funds through domestic and foreign sources with the approval of the University Council, to carry out activities, if resources placed at its disposal by the University are found inadequate.
• To build a resource and information centre in key areas of staff development, namely organizational management, strategic planning and management, personality and leadership development, education technology (curriculum development course structure, teaching and training methods, learning resources development, etc.), ICT-based and learning methods and any other theme/ discipline as appropriate for the core business of the SDCs.