The Department of Botany, Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Khalsa College is known for its academic excellence, high calibre faculty, and greatly enriching co-curricular activities. The Department offers B.Sc (H) Botany, B.Sc.(P), Life Sciences along with various interdisciplinary paper options through Generic Elective (GE) and Skill Enhancement Courses (SEC). Most of the faculty members have been involved in many research activities and have to their credits various research projects and innovation projects. The Department has well equipped instruments and infrastructure for this course. The laboratories are designed in such a manner that it is well-illuminated and aerated with projector facility and latest instruments. The laboratories are designed in such a manner that it is well-illuminated and aerated with projector facility, latest instruments particularly PCR machine, Binocular microscope, B.O.D. incubator, UV Spectrophotometer, Autoclave, Laminar flow, Growth chamber, pH-meter, Electronic balance, Electrophoresis units, UV trans-illuminator, Refrigerated Centrifuge, etc. Apart from these state-of-the-art methods involved in teaching, Department also maintains an enormous collection of museum and herbarium specimens. These collections facilitate in practical learning of the subject and in forming a connection with the specimens of nature they study. Department has a well planned Botanical garden named after seventh Sikh Guru, Guru Har Rai Botanical garden with wide range of plant species. It also has a mushroom house for cultivation of diverse variety of mushrooms like Button mushroom, milky mushroom, white and king oyster. The Hydroponics unit has also been set up for soil-less cultivation for purpose of providing scope of research and skill based experiments to students.
The Department also regularly organizes workshops, conferences, seminars, symposia with participation of faculty as well as students from other universities and colleges. These activities help students and are instrumental not only in keeping themselves abreast of current developments and frontiers of research in the subject discipline but also in developing organizational skills.
The Department has a Botanical Society-'Floridus' which organizes lectures by eminent biologists to keep the students updated with latest developments in the field of science and technology. The endeavor is to inculcate interest and curiosity in them and to broaden their minds for a better understanding of the subject at the undergraduate level. It aims to prepare them for higher learning in specialized areas by providing them an insight into future career options. The society organizes visits to research institutes to provide hands-on training to the students in research labs and field excursions to educate students about the natural habitats of diverse plant groups. During the annual festival ‘Gardenia’, various inter- and intra-college events are organized which provides intra and inter-college interactions among students and helps students to engage in various extra-curricular activities that give them a platform to show-case their talents.
Many alumni of this department are pursuing their careers in higher education from institutions of prestigious repute in India and abroad. Some of our alumni are currently placed in higher positions in many governmental organizations/Institutions like Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Department of Plant & Molecular Biology, South Campus, University of Delhi; Jawaharlal Nehru University, etc.