LAHORE: Computing education at the University of the Punjab (PU) started with the establishment of the Center for Computer Science on September 10, 1987 when Prof Dr Rafiq Ahmad was Vice Chancellor. The Center offered Post-Graduate Diploma (PGD) in Computer Science. The Center was upgraded to Department of Computer Science on September 10, 1991 and was made part of Faculty of Engineering and Technology on September 18, 1991 during the tenure of Prof. Dr. Munirud Din Chughtai as Vice Chancellor. The department was moved to Faculty of Science on October 13, 2000. Prof. Dr. NaveedAkhtar Malik was the founder head and the only full-time faculty member of these academic units. The department consisted of two rooms and started the MSc Computer Science degree program in Fall 1991 with an intake of 15 students. The department was upgraded to Punjab University College of Information Technology (PUCIT) on November 11, 2000 when Gen (R) ArshadMahmood was Vice Chancellor. The college was placed in the Faculty of Science on November 24, 2000 and housed in the AllamaIqbal (Old Campus). The physical infrastructure of the college was established in the offices that had historically been occupied by the University Registrar, Treasurer, and Controller of Examinations, and Old Library building, the Old Social Works building including the Haathi (Elephant) Hall, and historic residences of Vice Chancellor and Registrar. Prof. Dr. ShoaibUddin Ahmad was appointed the first principal of the college. The GIS Center was moved to PUCIT on September 8, 2004 and separated from PUCIT on October 31, 2014. The land for the scenic PUCIT New Campus on Samsani Road (behind SUPARCO) was allocated in 2009 and the GIS Center building was inaugurated on December 30, 2011. The classes on this campus started on October 10, 2012 with the first batches of students in MSc GIS, MPhil Remote Sensing & GIS, BS Computer Science, BS Information Technology, and BS Software Engineering. Computer Science Floor in the GIS Center building was completed in Fall 2013. The IT Center building at PUCIT New Campus was completed during Summer 2014 and became functional in Fall 2014. The MPhil Computer Science and PhD Computer Science classes on this campus started in Fall 2015. The first batch of approximately 250 students graduated from this campus in Spring 2016. From a humble start of a 2-room department established 25 years ago, the college has grown to two campuses spanning over twenty acres of land. It currently offers seven degree programs: BS Computer Science, BS Information Technology, BS Software Engineering, MSc Computer Science, MPhil Computer Science, MPhil Remote Sensing and GIS, and PhD Computer Science. All three BS programs have always received the highest “W” ranking by HEC’s National Computing Education Council (NCEAC), which is received by less than 15% of about 125 computing programs in the country that have been accredited by the Council thus far. NCEAC assigns rankings to computing programs based on the quality of their faculty, curriculum, students, infrastructure, and processes. PUCIT’s academic and administrative environment remained fairly average and turbulent during the first five years after its birth. The college milieu, however, took a positive turn when Dr. Syed Mansoor Sarwar took over as Principal in April 2006. When he assumed the duties of the top administrator of the college, he was the only PhD faculty, only two teachers had 18-year education (MS/MPhil), the college did not offer any MPhil and PhD program, curricula of the BS and MSc degree programs were outdated and out of line with international standard, and the infrastructure was dated and poor. Since his joining, PUCIT has taken many initiatives to make the college a force to reckon with in computing education and research in the country. The basic parameters used to measure the performance of an academic unit of a university have improved steadily. It is under Dr. Sarwar’s tenure that several specialized graduate (MPhil/PhD), and specialized and general-purpose undergraduate laboratories were established at both campuses of PUCIT. In order to encourage and facilitate entrepreneurship by students an Open Source and E-Lancing Lab was also established at the college. To promote merit and transparency at the college, several key business processes have also been automated including the development and deployment of an indigenous single sign-on Campus Management Solution (CMS) system for transparent and timely management of student grades, provision of online transcripts, generation of fee challans, etc. Online Admission System and automated Grading System for efficient and transparent conduction and grading of Entrance Test and admissions have also been developed and deployed at PUCIT. In future, the college plans to have an on-campus technology park to have a close relationship with the local technology industry and a technology incubation center to hone entrepreneurial aptitudes of students and graduates. In order to facilitate the recruitment of its graduates, the college established the Career Affairs and Placement Office in 2007. This office holds annual Job Fairs in which a large number of companies participate, conduct on-campus tests andon-the-spot interviews, and offer jobs to many students during this activity. A new 3-storied Graduate Studies and Faculty Block has recently been completed at PUCIT Old Campus. This is the first and, perhaps, the last building that has been built at Old Campus using the same facade and architecture that the other historic buildings on the campus have. This building will house seven graduate labs, 30 faculty offices, a videoconferencing room, and lecture rooms for MPhil/PhD classes. The number of international (impact factor and HEC recognized) journal and conference publications, books, and international patents authored by the college faculty and students has improved consistently. In 2015, these numbers were reported to be the highest in the college history. Today, the college has several purpose-built classrooms, faculty and staff offices, modern computing labs for undergraduate and graduate education, and over 60 full-time committed faculty members comprising 17 PhD degree holders and around 30 who are pursuing their PhD degrees. Five of these faculty members are Fulbright scholars and three have been the recipients of Erasmus Mundus scholarships. These faculty members are doing research and development in the most contemporary domains of Computer Vision, Image Processing, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Cloud Computing, Computer Networks, Data Science, Programming Languages and Compilers, Graph Theory, Parallel and Distributed Computing, Natural Language Processing, Software Engineering, Sensor Networks, Natural Language Processing, Network Security, and Social Networks. PUCIT currently has over 2800 full-time students, including around 150 graduate students pursuing their MPhil and PhD degrees. The college has 7000 alumni, including founders of around 70 technology companies. Its graduates form around 30% of the workfoce in Lahore’ssoftware industry. A survey of 920 college graduates, with 81:19 male-to-female ratio, has revealed that 85% of the college graduates are employed by 394 companies including technology giants like Microsoft and Facebook, 7% run their own businesses, 33% have pursued higher education, and 22% are residing in a foreign country (mostly in UAE, Saudi Arabia, Germany, USA, England, Sweden, Canada, and New Zealand). The college offers several types of merit- and need-based scholarships as well as fee concessions to its students. Nearly 40% of the college students receive some kind of financial aid, amounting to about Rs 30 million per year. This financial aid comes from various sources including National ICT R&D Fund scholarships, HEC scholarships, PEEF scholarships, university’s merit/needy scholarships, PUCIT scholarships, fee concessions, Biat-ul-Maal scholarships, and private donors. In addition, nearly 10% of the senior undergraduate students also receive part-time teaching assistantships. Graduate students are also offered part-time teaching and research assistantships through funded projects and PUCIT funds. Due to the continuously improving quality of education at the college, admission to PUCIT has become highly competitive. Only 5% of the approximately 12000 applicants and only 8% of the about 1250 applicants are admitted to its BS and MPhil/PhD degree programs, respectively. September 10, 2016 marked the 25th anniversary of the start of computing degree programs at the University of the Punjab. Today, PUCIT is country’s largest single source of well-rounded, high-quality graduates, nurtured by a group of extremely committed and respected computing faculty, and modern laboratories and infrastructure that is second to none in the nation. Lessons learnt from PUCIT’s journey to excellence could be used as a model for improving the standards of education at other public and private sector academic institutions.