Letter to my former Christ students

Two years ago I began writing a letter to all my former students at Christ, soon after the even semester. I have kept that going and so far have written three. The idea was to keep myself connected to them and them to their precious memories. Following is the recent email I wrote on 14 March to all those former students whose email ids I had.

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Hi All
I guess this is my third mail to you all updating about the developments at Christ. Today was the last day of the even semester. Hence, thought of writing to you all.

As I had mentioned (or so I think) Christ became a university as per ministry of HRD letter dated 22 July 2008.There are already significant changes. But my own hunch is that the universitiness might take another four-five years to become very clear. Following are some of the developments I have seen.

* Christ has opened another campus on Kengeri road in Bangalore. The campus will house Engineering and Management programmes. The inauguration is on 19 March 2009.
* I have heard that two other campuses are coming up in Pune and Delhi. (not too sure of the second one) There were also rumours of two more in Dubai and Singapore. Not sure what has happened to it after the recession.
* There is a ladies' hostel that has come up on campus. (if i have missed it in my previous mail.)
* In the old car park a twelve storied building is coming up. Already the basement, I and II floor are up. the basement will be used for car park. The entire building might get ready in the next one and a half year. Although I am told it might take two-three years.
* Mr Kennedy has been promoted as the associate dean. Abhaya has taken over as the overall dept coordinator. Shaila is coordinating Communicative English programme, Abhaya- Optional English, Shobhana- MA English, Naresh- Journalism, Suparna (Naresh's wife)- MS Communication. I am co-ordinating the MPhil and PhD programmes in Media Studies and English.
* Christ is starting MPhil and PhD programme in about a dozen disciplines. (website has details)
* Some of the programmes are chaging their names. Communicative English - Communication and Media Studies, Optional English - English Studies, General English - English.
* We are 20 in the dept now. Next year the number might rise to 25-26!
* From this year we are starting honours in Media and English Studies. There will be three major systems for the first two years of studies. In the final year students can specialise in one subject. However, the three major will continue in final year for those who do not prefer honours.
* One Mr Subramanian is the University Registrar.
* With the University status, the institution comes under the complete control of the central government and the state government loses all control.
* (I am told Jain College and Dayanad Sagar are also becoming universities)

On the personal front
* In the last four years that I have been here, I had organised nine certificate courses mostly with experts from outside: Cyberculture, Philosophy (twice), Indian Philosophy, Semiotics, German, Visual Culture, Existentialism, Film Analysis. Apart from this assisted in co-orinating the course in Cultural Studies (three times), Gender and Culture, Rethinking media laws (twice) and Psychology after Lacan. I guess I am puttting a full stop to them this year due to increased workload and my own desire to train me more in reasearch + complete my PhD. A big thank you to all of you who took these courses and kept me going.
* This year I completed my MPhil and a UGC project. Both on Konkani literature. Presented two research papers and published one.
* The experiments with blog which began in 2005 thanks to the then FEP-JPEng final year batches (with the active help from Ashwin, Vicky, Ajay Ram and their friends) has gone far. I have lost count of the number of newer and unique experiments that have happened.
* Do have a look at http://anilpinto.blogspot.com/ and http://lacanians.blogspot.com/ The blog has an average of 85 visitors per day which swings between 80 and 150 per day from over 40 countries.
* And, yes, I am still happy (read un*******)

By the way, a lot of mail that i send to you - i had made a group of the email ids I had of you way back- bounce back. Could one of you volunteer to collect the new and frequently used email ids of all your classmates and email me, so that I can update my lists? Also, please see that this mail reaches to all your classmates and juniors who studies here between June 2005 and June 2008.