62 Heads Rotate, for the betterment

In most of the institutions including  Regional Engineering College, Heads of Department were unchanged for a long time. In REC, Prof.P.K.Charlu(Electrical), Dr K.S.Mony (Civil), Prof Achyuhthan Nair(Mech),Prof.KunjiPaulo,Dr.V.C.Nair(Maths),Dr.A.K.R.Unni(Chemistry),Dr.M.A.Lonappan (Physics),and Prof.K.Sankaran Nair (Humanities)  remained as Heads for a long time. However, there was a direction   from the Government of India that in national institutions, headship should be rotated among the professors as per seniority in each department.  In the early days, there were only one or two professors in each department. As the institution grew, each department had several professors so that this could be done easily. Probably this idea was introduced to see that  the departments get the benefit of guidance from different persons and growth  of the  department will accordingly be in different positive directions.

This was introduced in REC Calicut in the 1980s. In the Electrical engineering department, Prof. Charlu handed over charge to Prof.P.S.Srinivasan, then to Dr.Thiruvengadam, then Dr.P.P.Gervadis,and Dr. Neelakantan  in turn. Headship changed every three years. When it was the turn of Dr.Gajendran, he  refused to take  up the  responsibility  as he wanted to spare  his  full time on research. Dr.Prabhakaran   became the  head in his place. The department of electrical engineering took the initiative in starting the B.Tech programmes in Electronics  Engineering and Computer Engineering and appointments  were made  to these departments in due course. Those who have the basic degree in these branches were able to get promotion to higher posts under these new branches.  As  Computer Science graduates were  too few at that time, many of those who had basic degree in Electrical Engg but did  M.Tech or PhD in  branches related to  Computer Science  could get  promotion to  this branch. When the department grew in size and the Electronics and Computer streams were in a position to stand on their own, for better administrative convenience, Board of Governors decided to separate the Electronics Engineering and Computer Science from the parent electrical department. Dr.Y.Venkataramani   became the Head of Electronics Engineering and Dr.M.N.Neelakantan, Head of Computer Science  department. As it was my turn to become Head of Electrical department, I took over as Head of the parent department.  However, Mechanical department remained   intact with B.Tech  Mechanical and B Tech  Production  & Management and Civil  Department with Civil and Architectural Engg. The smaller departments of Chemistry, Physics and Humanities were combined to form Department of Applied Sciences and Humanities.

From the beginning, the administrative work in the Electrical department was divided among the senior faculty and all cooperated in doing whatever possible to help the department.  Head of the department was only a person to put the signature for the department. Seniors and juniors were all working together and it was not at all difficult for me to carry on my duty as Head.  As head, I initiated steps to record the history of the department from the beginning acknowledging the contributions from the teaching and nonteaching staff. Research publications from all members of faculty were collected and kept in a file for ready reference. Whenever a new paper was published by the faculty, this was being displayed in the departmental notice board. A copy of the PhD thesis done by the faculty and those guided by the faculty were kept for reference in the departmental library. Almost all cooperated with me in these except one  professor whom I asked several times  to give copies of publications and PhD theses guided by him. He refused flatly. From the beginning he had some peculiarities and we juniors have seen the seniors making fun of him on many occasions. He loved sweets too much and in departmental meetings, any one not interested in taking sweets used to give him the sweets and he used to eat any number of them without any difficulty. One funny thing was even though he was supposed to be doing research in an area related to Control Systems which happens to be   my specialization too, I could never get a chance to understand his work or the work of his students who took PhD of Calicut University under him.  Three of my colleagues have done PhD under him and one or two from N S S College of Engineering, Palakkad but I could  not  keep  even one  of their  publications or PhD theses  in the department for reference  because of his  attitude.

I am very happy to report that except for this lone case, I could get full cooperation from all teaching and nonteaching staff in carrying out my duties as Head. I would like to place my gratitude to every one of them. Even though the department was split into three, all three departments joined together for  many common functions  as if we were together.