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St. Thomas' College (Autonomous), Thrissur
	Administration Block of St Thomas' College
Motto	Veritas Vos Liberabit
Motto in English	The truth will set you free
Type	Government Aided College
Established	1889; 135 years ago
Founder	Mar Adolph Medlycott
Principal	Dr. (Fr.) Martin K. A.
Academic staff	200
Administrative staff	70
Students	3470
Undergraduates	2850
Postgraduates	480
Doctoral students	140
Location	Thrissur, Kerala, India
Campus	Urban
Nickname	STC
Affiliations	University of Calicut
Website	stthomas.ac.in

St. Thomas' College (Autonomous), Thrissur, is a government aided college located in Thrissur, Kerala, India. It is founded by Mar Adolph Medlycott in 1889. It is the oldest college in the Erstwhile Princely State of Cochin and present day Thrissur district. It is the first Catholic college in Kerala and is conducted by the Syro-Malabar Catholic Archdiocese of Thrissur.
The college is affiliated with the University of Calicut.

The college attained Autonomous status in 2014 and was recognised as College with Potential for Excellence by University Grants Commission in 2016. The college was accredited with A++ grade in its fourth cycle of National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) accreditation, scoring CGPA of 3.70 on a four-point scale in October 2022. It is ranked 57th among colleges in India by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) in 2024.^[1]

History

Started as a lower secondary school in 1889, the founder, the first vicar apostolic of Thrissur, Adolphus Edwin Medlycott, named it St. Thomas’ College. The college started to function in the compound of present-day Bishop's House compound. In 1919, it was raised to a second-grade college in arts, affiliated to the University of Madras.^[2] The college was elevated as a first-grade college under the University of Madras in April 1925, and it is the third non-government college in Kerala to achieve that status, with Union Christian College, Aluva, being the first and SB College Changanasserry being the second.

The buildings of the college were constructed in a phased manner. Rev. Medlycott has given a description about the college at the time of his return in 1896 as below:

The bishop on taking charge found that there were practically no schools, ... he took early steps to open as many elementary parish schools as possible; within nine years (1888-96) the vicariate was provided with no less than 231 elementary parish schools for both sexes, educating over 12,000 children, besides a high school (St. Thomas's College), with 95 students;.... plans were prepared to house the above college in a handsome structure.^[3]

The first building of the college is the one which is having the tower. Menacherry Hall was built in the year 1941. The Science Block (present day Academic Block on the opposite side of the road) was built in 1956.

In 2004, St. Thomas' was accredited with a B++ grade by NAAC, an autonomous organization instituted by the UGC. In September 2010, the college was re-accredited with A grade by NAAC. The college attained A Grade in its NAAC reaccreditation in 2016. In October 2022, the college attained A++ grade in its fourth cycle of NAAC accreditation.

The year 2018-2019 was celebrated as Sathyaprayan 1919-2019, the centennial as second grade college and the commemoration was inaugurated by Shri Ram Nath Kovind, President of India, on 7 August 2018.

Academic programmes

The college offers graduate, postgraduate and Ph.D. level programmes in a wide range of subjects. There are twenty-four teaching departments^[4] (including ten research departments^[5] and the thirteen postgraduate departments^[6]) which encompass 140 teachers.

Departments

Humanities
- Department of History
- Department of Political Science
Languages
- Department of English
- Department of Hindi
- Department of Malayalam
- Department of Sanskrit
Mathematical Sciences
- Department of Mathematics
- Department of Statistics
Computer Science and Application
- Department of Computer Science
- Department of Computer Application
- Department of Data Science
Life Sciences
- Department of Botany
- Department of Zoology
Physical Sciences
- Department of Physics
- Department of Chemistry
- Department of Electronics
Social Sciences
- Department of Commerce
- Department of Criminology and Police Science
- Department of Economics
- Department of Forensic Science
- Department of Management Studies
- Department of Media Studies
- Department of Psychology
- Department of Social Work
Other
- Department of Library and Information Studies
- Department of Physical Education

Department of Physics

The Department of Physics was started in 1922 within three years of the establishment of the college itself. In 1951 a B.A Degree in Physics was started (later changed to BSc) was started with the affiliation of the Madras University. In 1961 MSc Physics (of Kerala University) was started which was a rare course in those days (one among four colleges in Kerala then). This Department offers bachelor's degrees and master's degrees in physics.

Department of Zoology

The department of Zoology, established in 1957, was affiliated to the University of Kerala. Post Graduate course was introduced in 1969 with entomology as the special paper. The department was approved as a recognized research center under university of Calicut in 1974 and is enriched with a full-fledged Research laboratory supported by Department of Science and Technology.

Department of Statistics

In the year 1955, the degree course in B.A. statistics was started under the Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics affiliated to the University of Madras. The B.A. course was converted to three-year B.Sc. course in statistics in 1958 under the University of Kerala. The Department of Statistics was established in the year 1984. This department offers bachelor's degrees, master's degrees and doctoral studies (PhD).

Department of Library and Information Studies

The Department of Library and Information Studies has two constituents: (1) the library which supplements the academic, intellectual, informational, inspirational, spiritual and recreational requirements of the academia with its rich resources and services, and (2) the department of information studies which offers various academic programmes.

The Department of Library is one of the largest and oldest college libraries in Kerala. Santhome Athenaeum, the Centennial Library of the college, houses about a hundred thousand books and subscribes to more than one hundred periodicals including journals, magazines and dailies. The library collection includes general, multidisciplinary, language and literature books in Malayalam, Sanskrit, Hindi and English language and literature along with the books in humanities, social sciences and natural, physical and mathematical sciences.

The valuable collections include forty sets of encyclopӕdiae, twenty sets of dictionaries and directories of various categories. Some of the collections are very rare, viz. 4 editions of Encyclopædia Britannica, 2 editions of World Book Encyclopedia, Collier's Encyclopedia (24 volumes), Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia (29 volumes), Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia (15 volumes), The Book of Knowledge: The Children's Encyclopædia, International Encyclopedia of Ecology and Environment (30 volumes), Encyclopedia of Visual Art (10 volumes) and Encyclopedia of Animal World (21 volumes). In the collection of dictionaries, there are 20 sets of various types, among them A New English Dictionary (9 volumes), published in 1888, is the rarest and the most valuable. Moreover, A Dictionary of English Language abridged by Robert Gordon Latham from that of Samuel Johnson in 1882, Malayalam-English Dictionary by Hermann Gundert and Malayalam-Portuguese Dictionary by Arnos Padre are available in the library. Many of the old ecclesiastical books which were in the beginnings of the college were taken to the collection of Bishop's house to make room for academic books.

The College Library provides open access to its documents and any member can browse through the collections which are arranged according to Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC). The library provides an online catalogue to trace these books. The members can also access scholarly literature which is available online through National Library and Information Services Infrastructure for Scholarly Content (N-LIST) of UGC-INFLIBNET. Through N-LIST, members can access to 6,000+ journals, 1,99,500+ ebooks under N-LIST and 6,00,000 ebooks through National Digital Library of India. The College Library houses 30 terminals of computers for the use of students and faculty. The library provides reference, scholarly literature search services and similarity check for plagiarism. The seating capacity of the library is 408 which include carrels, research cubicles and learning stairs.

The academic Department of Information Studies offers the Postgraduate Certificate Programme in Information Studies. The programme is delivered entirely online using virtual learning platform and consists of three modules: information literacy, academic writing and communication, and intellectual property and its management. The programme is first of its kind in India. Training on electronic reference management and awareness about web research profiles, citation metrics, intellectual property rights, ethical methods of research and publishing, pseudo-journals and plagiarism are also imparted by the department.
In the first quarter of 2020, the department started to offer the UGC approved two credit course Research and Publication Ethics online through St Thomas E-learning Platform (STEP), the Moodle instance of the college. Later it was offered online in the month of August in 2020 and in the following years and was attended by about 900 participants from different parts of India.

Doctoral Studies (PhD)

The college is offering research programmes under the following ten departments:

Department of Botany
Department of Chemistry
Department of Commerce
Department of Computer Science
Department of Economics
Department of English
Department of Mathematics
Department of Physics
Department of Statistics
Department of Zoology

Notable alumni

Alphons Joseph - Malayalam Film Music Director
Ashok Menon, Former Judge, Kerala High Court
Anil Akkara, Former Member Of Kerala Legislative Assembly
Atlas Ramachandran, Former Banker, Entrepreneur
Biju Menon, Actor
C. Achutha Menon - Indian Communist Leader and Chief Minister of Kerala state
C. Janardhanan, Communist Leader, Former Member of Parliament
Chinmayananda Saraswati - Chinmaya Mission
C. Raveendranath, Former Minister for General education Government of kerala
Devan- Malayalam Film Actor
E. Santhosh Kumar, Winner of The Kerala Sahithya Academy Award for the best novel in 2012.
Eknath Easwaran - Internationally respected spiritual teacher^[7]
Eluvathingal Devassy Jemmis - Padma Shri awardee, Professor at Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research
EMS Namboodiripad - Indian Communist Leader and first Chief Minister of Kerala state
George Alapatt - Fourth Bishop of Syro-Malabar Catholic Archdiocese of Thrissur
George Menachery – Historian
Hariharan (director)
Johnson- Malayalam Music Director
Joseph Mundassery - Noted Literary critique and Education Minister of Kerala
Kochouseph Chittilappilly - MD of V-Guard Industries Ltd
Mar Aprem Mooken - Metropolitan of the Church of the East in India
Mathai Manjooran - Indian Independence Activist
Mukundan C. Menon, Journalist
M. O. Joseph, Film Producer
M. P. Ramachandran, Businessman
Narain, Actor
Ouseppachan - Malayalam Film Music Director
P. T. Kunju Muhammed- Malayalam Film Director and Producer
Panampilly Govinda Menon - First Prime Minister of Cochin, Last Chief Minister of Travancore-Cochin and Union Cabinet minister for Law and Railways.
Paulose II (Indian Orthodox Church) - Supreme primate of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church
Ranjith Sankar, Director
Shine Tom Chacko, Actor
T. J. Saneesh Kumar Joseph, Member Of Kerala Legislative Assembly
T. Pradeep - Professor of Chemistry, Chennai
T. G. Ravi- Malayalam Film Actor
V. M. Sudheeran- Former Member of Parliament
Victor Manjila- Former Indian Football Player
Vijayarajamallika, Poet, Activist

Notable faculty

References

^ "2024 NIRF Ranking" (PDF).
^ "Landmark in Kerala history". The Hindu. Chennai, India. 19 June 2008. Archived from the original on 22 June 2008. Retrieved 23 February 2010.
^ Medlycott, A.E. (1912). Saint Thomas Christians in Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church, Volume 14. Robert Appleton Company. pp. 678–688.
^ "location". St. Thomas' College, Thrissur. Archived from the original on 12 June 2014. Retrieved 15 June 2014.
^ "research". St. Thomas' College, Thrissur. Archived from the original on 25 June 2014. Retrieved 15 June 2014.
^ "course". St. Thomas' College, Thrissur. Archived from the original on 18 June 2014. Retrieved 15 June 2014.
^ "The headmaster of my college was Father John Palakaran, a Catholic priest from a distinguished Kerala Christian family who had taken his degrees at Edinburgh University", page 6 of Easwaran, Eknath (1996). Seeing with the eyes of love: Eknath Easwaran on the imitation of Christ. Tomales, CA, USA: Nilgiri Press. p. 8. ISBN 0-915132-87-7. Retrieved 19 December 2010.