From: bcsabha.kal...@gmail.com To:
146-year-old Xavier's College to get its first non-Jesuit principal Anahita Mukherji Mumbai For the first time in its 146-year history, Mumbai's iconic St Xavier's College will be headed by a nonpriest: Agnelo Menezes, a hugely popular economics professor at the institution.The college, founded in 1869, has always had a Jesuit priest as principal. The development comes close on the heels of another Jesuit institution in Mumbai, the 152-year-old St Stanislaus High School in Bandra, deciding to appoint for the first time, a non-Jesuit principal--school supervisor Anna Correa--as its head from the new academic year. For Menezes (58), it hasn't quite sunk in that he'll be taking charge in a fortnight.The son of a clerk who doubled as a carpenter at St Paul's Church in Dadar, Menezes grew up in the chawls of Parel in central Mumbai. He worked his way out of poverty through a single-minded focus on his education. Menezes will take over from Fr Frazer Mascarenhas, who served as principal for 12 years and during his stint supported social activists Binayak Sen and Arun Ferreira, charged with Naxalism, chastised his student, Shiv Sena's Aditya Thackeray , after the Sena's youth wing burning copies of a book that critiqued the party and before the 2014 general elec tions wrote to his students cautioning them against voting for a model of development that he claimed privileged growth over social justice. It was during his tenure that Xavier's became Mumbai's first autonomous college for arts and science. Autonomy allowed the college freedom to design its own syllabus and method of evaluation. Menezes hopes to build on the legacy he's set to inherit.He wants to introduce a greater research orientation to all course content. “I want to convert one exam paper in each subject into a research project,“ he adds. Menezes, better known as Aggie to students, is sad that as principal, teaching will now take a backseat for him.“Social involvement is my passion. The canteen will remain central to my activities,“ adds Menezes, known to hold forth on an array of subjects in the college canteen. Menezes was too shy to enter the canteen while in his first year as a student at St Xavier's. He credits poet and writer Eunice de Souza, a former teacher at the college, for having helped him develop self-confidence as a student. After graduating from the college, he returned to the institution as a teacher. After five years, he took a break and joined the Jesuit order. However, he could not deal with the religious rigour it entailed and chose, instead, to return to teaching. He spent 19 years as an economics professor in Dr T K Tope Night College for underprivileged students. “Many of my students were first-generation learners. Teaching them economics helped me hone my skills in the subject,“ says Menezes. When he returned to St Xavier's eight years ago, little did he imagine that he would, one day , head the institution.