Name    :  Edgar,M.Flint,M.A.,B.Sc.

 

Period   :  1935-1937 & 1938-1943

Mr. and Mrs. Edgar M.Flint left Boston, U.S.A., in 1913 to join the staff at the American College, Madurai. As Principal, he guided the College with wisdom and courage from 1938 to 1943. It was a period of great political ferment and upheaval and Principal Flint,s sagacity stood the College in good stead.

Name   :  A.Ranjitham,M.A.,L.T.

 

Period  :  1935-1938 &     

               1943-1948

Mr. A. .Ranjitham, the acting Principal, carried on the administration of the College with unflinching enthusiasm, tact, efficiency and uniform courtesy.. The remarkable advances and payment achievements of his principalship of the College will stand out pre –eminently in the history of the College. In June 1943, Mr. A.Ranjitham assumed office as Principal. The next five years saw the construction of Wallace Hall, the first two floors of the Humanities Hall and the Coe Lodge and Flint House. B.Sc. and B.Com. degree courses were introduced during his tenure.

Name    :  K.E.Nainan,M.A.(Acting)

 

Period   :  1948-1949

Prof..E.Nainan served the institution in many distinguished ways including as Principal during 1948-49. He was a professor par excellence who kept his students spell-bound by his versatile scholarship in many fields besides English Literature. The range of his lectures was extensive and the always painted on a wide canvas with broad sweeps.

Prof.Nainan was one of the few who could hold the students in rapt attention even in Ethical studies, which had no examinations afterwards, with his compelling enthusiasm and encyclopedic scholarship. Primarily a scholar and teacher, it is admirable that he agreed to pilot the College through a nor-so-easy period of transition.

Name    :  S.J.Savarirayan,M.A.

 

Period   :  1949-1967

Sri S.J.Savarirayan who was guiding the destinies of our college for eighteen years passed on the torch to Dr.Manuel Amirthavasagam Thangaraj of the Madras Christian College in June 1967. The progress that we made in the eighteen years under the dynamic captaincy of Sri.S.J.savarirayan is nothing but phenomenonal. The opening of three post graduate departments, the introduction of an Orientation Programme for the new entrants to the College, the open access in the Library, the construction of Dudley Hall for Hostel students, the Stoffer Hall for the Chemistry and Zoology P.G. Departments and extension of James Hall for the Physics Post graduate department, the Auditorium, the Oberlin Shansi Memorial building and a recreation centre for the students are only a few of the landmarks of the Savarirayan era.

Sri S.J.Savarirayan threw all the strength and energy at his command in building up our College into a unique institution. Here is a man who with all his mind and heart loved this College. The beat tribute that we can ever pay to Sri.s.J.Savarirayan would be by sincerely striving to build the college yup as centre of the soul- stirring pursuit to truth and knowledge. The college worked hard to translate his dream of making American College and autonomous institution.

Name    :  Manuel A.Thangaraj,M.A.,Ph.D.
               (Toronto)

 

Period   :  1967-1979

The American College has always been lucky in its principals. And one of the distinguished among them is Dr.M.A.Thangaraj whom the college was fortunate to have as its principal from 1967 to 1979. A man of many talents, he was a great steward. Substantial improvement of the college’s finance, considerable expansion of its physical facilities, improvement of student and faculty quality and finally the attainment of college autonomy are, in short, some of his major accomplishments.

Dr.Thangaraj was an administrator with foresight and vision. During his stewardship of the American College over the decade, many accomplishments of a crucially important nature have taken place at the college. For example, the creation of an endowment in India for the College with the generous sum of Rs..15,00,000/- transferred from American College Endowment Fund in New York in 1974, was wise and productive. As a result, at a time when many private colleges in our state were delaying payments of staff salaries due to paucity of funds, the American college had the distinction of not only paying the salaries regularly but of setting apart a tidy sum of Rs.70,000/- annually for research and creative work by its staff members. Another wise move was the construction of the income –generating shops and office complex.

One needs also to mention the crucial achievement, viz., the attainment of autonomous status by the American College, a dream come true, for the realization of which Dr.Thangaraj labored almost from the time he took over as Principal in 1967.

Dr. Thangaraj’s work was not confined to the American College,. As a dynamic member of the Madurai University Syndicate, he helped this young University to develop into a modern, forward looking University with many reforms to its credit in its educational calendar, courses, syllabi and examinations.