There were many experienced teachers at NIT Calicut during our times with many of them having doctorates from IIT "s and created refinement to the learning process. Somewhere education was tough and at the same time hectic and challenged students into honing their skills. Crisply said we as students were beneficiaries of the vast academic experience of the faculty.
In the first year itself we had Doctorates teaching us in Dr. Revathy Rajagopal who held a Ph.D in mathematics and Dr. P P Gerwadis who used to teach the subject "Basic Electrical Engineering" and Dr.Rama Rao who used to teach us Physics, Dr. VKC Menon used to teach Chemistry and so did Dr. AKR Unni, Dr.Ramakrishnan and Dr.George. One of the highlights of the first year was Mr. Shankaran nair who used to teach Humanities with humour.
In 1983 there was a strike at REC Calicut precisely in November and students being packed off home for almost a month. The third semester classes were just underway with Dr. Prabhakaran nair teaching circuit theory. There was one Dr. Murthy from Karnataka state who used to handle our Electrical labs at this point of time who subsequently left REC. After the strike Mr. Suresh Kumar started teaching Electric Circuit Theory . I think he has written a book on Electrical Circuit Theory now. He is both a Btech and Mtech from IIT Madras.
Somewhere in 1984 there was a major technical seminar organized at REC attended by many stalwarts from across the country. I remember Dr. Natarajan from IIT madras also being one of the speakers on Thermodynamics. Later Dr. Natarajan was the Director of IIT Madras and also Chairman of AICTE. I had spoken to Dr. Natarajan in 1998 over the phone when he was the Director of IIT.
In the fourth Semester Dr. Raghunathan used to teach Strength of Materials and he had his Doctorate from France. In our circles he is known as Dr. Raghu and he was the student of my Mother's uncle P O C at the village school in Cherukunnu at Cannanore. Even today I remember two things I learnt from him 'Shear Force" and "Bending Moment" according to me a very crucial word in any engineering. The father of Dr. Raghunathan was a LMP doctor at the village and the only other doctor in that Village being the brother of my Grand Father .
I forgot to mention the name of Dr. Phillip Varghese at the Mathematics Department who used to teach Mathematics with distinction and is a serious overlook from my side . He used to be a great natural teacher of mathematics and very astute at explaining things. He lived mathematics and I used to get very high grades in his exams and tests.
There was Dr. Rama Krishnan used to teach Fortran programming for us in the 5th semester. Dr. Paul Joseph also taught us and was generally very well disposed towards students and more friendly with them. Dr. Rama Rao was back teaching Material Science in the 5th semester.
Dr. K P Mohandas used to teach us "Linear Systems Analysis" and "Control System Theory" with distinction. He has written a book titled "Modern Control Theory" and Iam longing to have a look at it. Dr. T L Jose used to teach Power Systems. Dr. P S Srinivasan used to teach Induction Machines with eloquence. Dr. Neelakantan Nampoothiri taught us Computer Science;Dr. Chandramohan taught us Operations Research which according to me was a great advantage being introduced to this subject very early in life and I have always had some involvement with this subject from time to time.
All these people and some more though their wisdom, experience and advanced education impressed upon us various subjects from time to time in a punctilious fashion posing challenges to the students and people like me who not just learnt but ruminated upon what they said must have advanced into a more egalitarian and distinguished flock in this society where education at the end of the day and like the one provided at REC puts you in some form of a higher pedestal only to lift many around into better forms of life and living.
No comments:
Post a Comment