CHENNAI: The Department of Higher Education on Monday appointed Kokila Thangasamy and K Murugan as Vice-Chancellors of Teachers Education and Tiruvalluvar Universities, respectively. Speaking to Express, Kokila Thangasamy, the new V-C of TN Teacher Education University said, “To make teacher trainees at all the 650-odd colleges under the TN Teachers Education University globally competitive, all teaching and learning materials available in print would be digitised.”
Thangasamy, the former director for Centre for Educational Research, Madurai Kamaraj University (MKU), also said that the university would initially focus on more rural school adoption programmes and tie-ups with top foreign universities.
Known in the TN literary circle by his pen name Kokila - derived from his native village Kokilapuram in Theni district - he received the ‘Best Book’ award from the State government in 2002 for his work titled, Child Centered Education.
Starting his career as a principal of Lakshmi College of Education, Gandhigram right after being awarded a PhD from MKU, he served in different positions at various universities for 29 years.
With publications of more than 100 research papers on various national and international fora, he was also awarded the S P Adithanar award in 2002 for extending support to language teachers in rural schools of Theni.
K Murugan, who was working as professor and head of Zoology department, School of Life Sciences, Bharathiar University (BU) was elevated as the Tiruvalluvar University’s V-C.
He is also the additional director at the DRDO-BU-CLS centre. Having earned all his degrees from the University of Madras, he got the Doctor of Science (DSc) from BU for his contribution on developing natural plant products to contain insects.
With more than 30 years of research and 26 years of teaching experience, Murugan was awarded Science and Technology Agency fellowship by the Research Development Corporation of Japan on 1996 and Commonwealth fellowship by the UK Association of Commonwealth Universities. He also bagged the CREST award from the Central Government in 2011. He participated in the tsunami rehabilitation-biopesticide spray operations for vector disease control at the worst-affected areas of Cuddalore and Nagapattinam and Puducherry in 2004-05.