BITS-Pilani alumni pay homage to late prof with memorial award

As a tribute to their late professor, some of the members of the BITS-Pilani alumni have joined hands with the alma mater to institute an award in his memory for teaching excellence.
Announcing the award on Teacher's Day today, the college said its purpose is to remember Prof S S Ranganathan and to encourage the teaching community.
Ranganathan, who died last year, had joined BITS-Pilani in 1978 and served as a faculty in the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering till 1987, a senior official of the college said.
"He was an epitome of teaching excellence who demonstrated an outstanding commitment and contribution to his students and colleagues. Alumni members still recall his invigorating lectures," he said.

The 'Prof SSR Memorial Teaching Excellence Award' includes Rs one lakh in cash, a plaque and a citation.
"Few alumni members under the umbrella of 'Proud to be BITSians', including some eminent ones, wanted to celebrate his legacy and approached BITS-Pilani and later an MoU was signed.

"Well-known academic S Seshasayee and co-founder and president of Bangalore-based Mindtree N S Parthasarathy, took up the mission with alumni across various batches for working out the initial corpus amount of Rs 25 lakh for the award to get going," the official said.
Born in Tamil Nadu in 1940, SSR, as he was fondly called, received a bachelor's degree in engineering and an MSc in engineering from Coimbatore Institute of Technology. He initially served at this institute from 1961-1977, he said.

"Even though he endured his fight against a killer disease for several years, he always stood for strength, dignity, courage and hope and served the cause of students, guiding them, being part of their joys, struggles and thus left an unparallelled legacy," BITS-Pilani said.
Ranganathan rejoined BITS-Pilani in 1994 and served thee till his retirement in 2000.
"The first SSR memorial award will be given from next year onwards. Members of the teaching staff from any of the Indian campuses of BITS-Pilani who have been full-time faculty for a minimum of six semesters or three years would be eligible for it.

BITS-Pilani, besides its main campus in Vidya Vihar area in Pilani in Rajasthan has centres in Goa, Hyderabad and Dubai.
"The selection criteria will be decided by a joint committee constituted by the Vice Chancellor which will include key alumni representatives as well," he added.