St Agnes college of city an all time star

Mangalore Today News Network

Mangaluru, July 6,2017: One of the oldest women’s colleges in South India, St. Agnes College, Bendur in Mangaluru, an autonomous college under Mangalore University, run by Catholic nuns, has been awarded with star college status by the Union Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, for its performance in the field of science and technology, according to a release from the college. It is the second women’s college in the State to receive this status.

Under the status, now the Department of Biotechnology has sanctioned Rs. 1 crore to the faculty of sciences of the college for nurturing excellence in undergraduate science education, it said. Earlier, the college had received some fund under star college scheme in 2012.

It is for improving critical thinking, innovations in teaching and learning, and to improve hands-on experimental work at the undergraduate level in basic sciences.  The main objective of the scheme was to attract students to basic sciences.

St.AGNES. Bendur - The Apostolic Carmel (A.C.) Flagship - A recap :

  February 8, 1914 was a memorable day in the history of the Apostolic Carmel when Rt. Rev. Paul Perini, S.J., Bishop of Mangalore blessed the whole property and laid the foundation for St. Agnes Convent. The next day a Secondary English Medium School, as it was called then, was opened with Classes I and II. There were 80 pupils on roll. A week later, an elementary school was opened for the poorer children with 46 pupils on roll.Rev. Mother Aloysia chose St. Agnes as the patron saint of the convent and of all the institutions on the campus with the motto “God is our strength”. Young girls desirous of studying in English medium flocked to St. Agnes Convent from Udupi, Kallianpur, Kundapur, Karkal. Mulki, Kinnigoli, Belthangady, Kasargod and other surrounding places gradually  spreading further. The original old cottages were fitted up as dormitories and a boarding house started at St.Agnes .

Foundation : Mother Veronica, nee Sophie Leeves, an English woman founded a “Carmel for the Missions” in India dedicated  the education of the young women along the west coast. The dream of education that Mother Veronica harboured in her heart when she was serving in Calicut(Kozhikode) as a sister of St. Joseph of the Apparition, “…all along the coast the young girls are entirely without any means of instruction…”, was realized when she started the Apostolic Carmel in France in 1868 and the three sisters trained by her arrived in Mangalore on 19th November 1870. Mother Marie des Anges, French by origin was the First Superior General and was called the Nurturing Mother while the one who shaped the Apostolic Carmel education was Mother Aloysia nee Mary Pia Rosario of Mangalore origin. The pioneering of quality education for girls thus belongs to the Apostolic Carmel with the starting of St. Ann’s Convent and School in 1870, at Pandeshwar, Mangalore preceding even a school of this caliber for boys’ education which happened in 1880 at Rosario.