Principal Ebenezer Jeyakumar retires from service today. However, the farewells were hosted yesterday. It was quite strange actually - there was more a sense of intense pride in having been a part of the Principal's achievements in everyone of us than an acute feeling of sadness that such a fine man was leaving us. It is my fervent hope and prayer that the next principal will carry on with the momentum created by him. In the farewell speech, he highlighted what he hadn't done or was leaving incomplete and attributed the success of the college's performance to his team of professors, teachers and other supporting staff. The placement officer, Mr. Rajkumar offered the best piece of news for the Principal - that Appollo Tyres had taken in 5 of our students and with that the placement figures for the year stands at 98.5%. All GCEians can take pride in this, immense pride!

Professor Damodarsamy assumes charge as Principal-in-charge.

For the first time, I visited the quarters to invite friends and others in the B,C and D type quarters. Was amazed at the size of each of the houses. Spacious, airy and opening on to huge open spaces outside ...birds of various kinds chirping, fluting and cawing...everything was so serene, calm and peaceful. I then heard that all this would be razed down by Periyar University to house its departments and that the housing quarters for GCE would be moved closer to the IOC filling and storage station..to inhale its pure fumes and breathe in its gassy fragrance. How could life be so cruel?

But then, as with everything else, life must go on...

Vacation starts for me from today. However, I must confess it is to be utilised more for my son's wedding preparations than any serious academic pursuit or professional updation. But, nothing shall deter me from enjoying my son's wedding, not the exams, not the valuations , not journal deadlines, not article writing.

I must share the latest whisper doing the rounds in the college...the government seems to have given its NOC for granting autonomy to GCE. It will be a milestone in the annals of the college...the transition from a dependent infant to an independent toddler. Since the actual mechanism of autonomy and what it means for the department of English is still not clear to me, I hope that it will bring about some changes in tune with the needs of the day in technical education.

This set me thinking...it looks like the government has given GCE all it needs by way of infrastructure and is now ready to let it go in its own way... the way a mother lets go off her children once they grow up so that they can fight, lose, survive, win and make their own lives. The law of nature works everywhere.

Even as teachers and students prepare for the vacation and study holidays respectively, one finds hundred and one tasks to be completed before one can really sit back and sigh and say, "Ah, the work for the year is over!' AU, Coimbatore had online examination application forms for the students...and paucity of staff led to students themselves going online at the college, downloading the forms and filling them online...something that one could not have imagined earlier.

The canteen nowadays has more customers from the nearby Periyar University, since theirs is of the stuff shoe leather and reindeer horns are made of - tough on the teeth and bad for digestion. Or so, some of them have confessed. Good to know that the GCE canteen is appreciated. I'm sure all GCEians will be happy to hear this. The vadai is great stuff...the thattapayir kolambu is ...slurppp...the rasam , watery but tasty...the poriyal oniony and coconutty...it is not blameless, but it is not poor either. And oh, the rosemilk and badam kheer...served in tall plastic tumblers, is chill, sweet and satisfying these hot summer days. Chappathis are served on special request too...

I attended a one-day training programme on the Cambridge certificate exam to be taken up by the II semester students in accordance with Anna University's decision on the curriculum for them. E-Bek to whom this has been outsourced arranged for the training. The resource person was Professor Robert Bellarmine, an expert in training trainers.

What a revelation the experience was! At 67 years of age, this professor retains his intuition for teaching and is able to sensitively understand the mood of the class, in this case, an 80 odd group of recalcitrant teachers, including me who has unreservedly accepted the challenge of the BEC module as trainer and examiner, unable to accept the change in the classroom.

I say this, because to most of us used to the regularity in teaching English - traditional, technical and communicative, the challenge to train students for an international certification was difficult. Teachers were apprehensive since they had no idea what exams they were preparing students for and what role they had to play in the present semester; they were in the dark about the certificate and the methodology of training students for the certificate course.

Though the whole training has come in late for all of us, Professor Bellarmine was outstanding as a trainer. His class did not have not one boring moment, as he took us through the various stages of preparing and training our students for BULATS, the certificate examination to be taken up by our second semester students. His impassive face cracks up into a smile when he notices his trainees enjoying the logic and mischief in his games, stories and activities. He is professional yet retains a humorous touch. He is so tuned to the intricacies of the trainees' responses that it was a joy to observe the manner in which he dealt with the questions, answers, ' worries and queries' (as he put it).

Now we can go ahead with our next batch of students with a sense of direction, purpose and particiaption.

As for the students, they love this pattern of examination. I also personally support this move by the University because the certificate examination has global acceptance and validity. It also assesses the level of language competence through well researched question papers in a manner that is much better than the subjective evaluation that is done in valuation camps.

However, several bottlenecks have to be removed to make it a more student friendly credit. If it can be done, nothing more revolutionary than this could come about in making students industry prepared from the communication and language skills perspective. From here, students can move on to other advanced certificates offered by Cambridge University. The opportunities are endless.