Mangaluru: St Agnes College and Agnesian Alumni Association will be organizing the maiden Mother Mary Aloysia Endowment Lecture 2015 in the college auditorium in Bendore on March 18.
Margaret Alva, former Governor of Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Goa, who is also an Ex-Agnesian herself will deliver the lecture on the topic ‘Women in Politics – Prospects and Challenges’.
M Supriya said that the association will also honour Margaret Alva with the Mother Mary Aloysia AC Award for a Distinguished Agnesian’ on this occasion. This is also in recognition of her services to the society in different capacities, she said, adding the association could consider adding a cash component to the award in the future if any member of the alumni come forward to set up a corpus. The maiden award will consist of a citation, he said.
Usha Fernandes, vice-president of the association said the association for the past four-years has been conducting various programmes in the run up to the centenary year celebration of the college in 2021. The endowment lecture is one among the many steps, she said adding the association has also been honouring four outstanding outgoing students of the college on the occasion of the International Women’s Day Celebration through the Women’s Cell of the college.
The Mother Mary Aloysia is the lone woman from India to receive the Kaiser-E-Hind Gold medal I class award from the then British Government for her outstanding services in the field of women’s education in her time. Supriya said the foray made by Mother Aloysia for education was way ahead of her times when hardly a handful of women ventured in to higher education and that too in far off Chennai. Lecture and the award is to recognize this spirit among Agnesians, she said.
