When K.M. Kaveriappa lays down his office as Vice-Chancellor of Mangalore University on Monday, he will be doing so after serving it for nearly four decades.
Mr. Kaveriappa joined the university as a lecturer and rose to become its vice-chancellor.
He was associated with the university from the time it was still a part of the Mysore University. In an interview to The Hindu he said that he joined the then postgraduation centre of Mangalore under the Mysore University as a lecturer in the Department of Bioscience in 1971. Mangalore University was formed on September 10, 1980.
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“When I joined the Department of Bioscience, it was in the Kasturba Medical College building on the Light House Hill Road in Mangalore city. The same building also housed Department of Commerce. We were using the laboratory of the medical college,” he recalled.
Mr. Kaveriappa said that the departments of Physics and Mathematics were in the then Karnataka Regional Engineering College (now NIT-K) building at Surathkal. The Department of Kannada was in Kodialbail on the premises of St. Aloysius College in Mangalore. Poet late S.V. Parameshwara Bhatta was heading it then. The administrative office of the postgraduation centre was also on the same campus, he said.
He said that the five departments were shifted to Mangalagangotri (also called Konaje) in 1973. Two more departments were opened during that year, he added.
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Mr. Kaveriappa said that even after Mangalore University was formed in 1980, the vice-chancellor’s office and its administrative wing remained in St. Aloysius College. The office of the Registrar (evaluation) was at Nandigudda. They were shifted to Mangalagangotri after a few years, he said. When he was Reader in the department, he was made the Deputy Registrar in 1980. He served as the Registrar of the university from 1981 to 1993. He was the chairman of the Department of Botony, when he assumed the office of the vice-chancellor on January 12, 2006.
During his term as the vice-chancellor, the university brought all undergraduate courses under the credit-based semester scheme. The university got Government approval for introducing the choice-based credit semester scheme for postgraduate courses, which would be implemented from 2010-11.
“I consider this university as my alma mater. The university should grow. I will feel happy if I hear good news about it,” he said.