St. Xavier’s College continues to reap the fruits of its long tradition, built up over 138 years, by many generations of faculty and students. We have departments that are institutions in themselves. Our Botany Department celebrates a Centenary this year and will host a National Conference in November. We celebrated the Platinum Jubilee of the Microbiology Department in January this year – the first undergraduate department of this discipline in the University and perhaps in India. And the first Life Science Department of the University, of course, our own, has just celebrated 30 years of its existence. Many stalwarts of these departments came back to their alma mater to remember and to celebrate. Conferences and exhibitions    helped to enhance the events. Our alumni of 138 years, a rich list of well-known personalities, Padma Vibhushan awardee Charles Correa and his wife Monika being prominent among these, are our treasure and resource, and we are increasingly making contact with them, to help us chart the future course of our College.

          While we revel in our rich educational heritage, we are also busy charting a new course for the future. Our vision is to reach international standards of excellence in higher education, after being acknowledged as being in the forefront of Indian Higher Education. Infrastructure like Video-Conferencing Facilities, extensive Computer Labs, Web-accessed Libraries and Multi-Media enabled Classrooms are getting into place. Three new courses have begun this year: the BSc. in Information Technology, the MSc. in Biotechnology and a post-graduate Certificate Course in Clinical Research. We had earlier added a Cyber Forensics course to our Certificate Courses in Forensic Science. All this suggests dynamic growth and upgradation.

It is the actual contact with international faculty and students, however, that is exciting. International exposure for our students and faculty through short term programmes has begun. So have courses for international students on campus. Deakin University and Harvard University students have been the first to visit for academic interaction. The plans of other Universities are being chalked out. Stanford University and the University of St. Gallens, Switzerland, will be hosted on campus for an International Symposium on Sustainable Development in November.

Research and action-based collaboration between Berkeley University, California and our Microbiology Department will begin next month in ensuring safe drinking water for Mumbai slums. Our Magazine illustrates how our students and faculty cleaned up the Kanheri Caves last year and the Mumbai newspapers have already proclaimed that Mumbai will be a cleaner city after Malhar 2007, when a unique event involving garbage removal in the coastal zone will kick off. The Indian Government-declared, “Year of Water” for 2007 is being taken seriously at St. Xavier’s. We even have an inter-disciplinary course on The Environment and Society being offered for this academic year, focusing on water resource and use.

          But it is not the additional academic programmes that offer most hope for the future. We have always had these. Changing the very core of our academics, our courses and syllabii, breaking free from the University stipulated academic material, and adopting on-going evaluative techniques for better learning – it is in this area of Academic Autonomy that we see ourselves forging ahead. The internationally practiced semester system and the credit system with its possibility for inter-disciplinary choices are some of the benefits of Autonomy that we desire. Compulsory components for all students, like critical thinking, ethical reasoning and the sciences of living systems, which Harvard University is reported to be toying with, are being considered. This will see our Faculty, freed from the shackles of University mediocrity, revelling in the possibility of shaping relevant courses, with standards of academic excellence we know our students are capable of. It is only our confidence in our competent and committed faculty that gives us the courage to consider this avenue. As an alumnus told us recently, “you owe it to Higher Education in India”.

          And so St. Xavier’s College will continue to fashion its tradition of excellence in Higher Education, an excellence that brings justice and that works for peace. Our students may show their mettle in the cultural field, as at Malhar, or in academics, as in the University examination merit lists, but the leadership role, exercised with courage and compassion, to bring a better life to the millions, is what we will be most proud of. Provocans ad volandum, indeed, ‘provoking to fly’, but directed, Ad Mayorem Dei Gloriam – To the Greater Glory of God: the motto St. Ignatius of Loyola gave us. May God’s Spirit, who inspired Ignatius, continue to inspire us!

Fr. Frazer Mascarenhas S.J.