Coat of arms
|
|
Motto | Luceat Lux Vestra |
---|---|
Motto in English
|
Let your Light Shine |
Type | Autonomous |
Established | 1925 |
Founder | Fr. Francis Bertram |
Affiliation | University of Madras |
Religious affiliation
|
Jesuit (Roman Catholic) |
Location | Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India |
Nickname | Loyolite |
Website | loyolacollege.edu |
Loyola College, Chennai is an autonomous Jesuit college of the University of Madras. It consistently ranks among the top five institutions in India for degree programmes in commerce, arts, natural sciences and social sciences.
It admits undergraduates and post-graduates and confers degrees in the commerce, sciences and liberal arts. The college is on a 99-acre (400,000 m2) campus in the heart of Chennai, in Nungambakkam. Its tree-lined pathways, academic buildings, steepled Gothic church which dates back to 1930, and separate fields for each sport, make it a landmark in the southern metropolis.
The name Loyola comes from the ancestral castle where Íñigo López de Loyola was born in 1491, the last of a large Basque family. He along with St. Francis Xavier and companions founded the Society of Jesus (the Jessuit Order), a worldwide organization of religious men numbering about 19,000. Nearly 4,000 are working in the 18 provinces of India. In Tamil Nadu there are 480 Jesuits working in schools, colleges, youth services, social work centres, parishes, mission outreach programmes, and in other forms of service and church ministry.
Loyola College was founded in 1925 by French Jesuit Fr. Francis Bertram, along with European Jesuits educated at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and the London School of Economics. The Department of Economics was founded by Fr. Basenach from the London School of Economics.
The college offers courses at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The arts/humanities stream includes English, economics, commerce, history, Tamil and sociology. Science courses include physics, chemistry, botany, zoology and computer science. The college follows a credit-based, semester pattern. Undergraduate students must pass all examinations and obtain at least 120 credits in three years to be eligible for a degree. All students must also earn non-academic credits from extra-curricular and social service options. The Department of Outreach facilitates social work in the college. It is a degree requirement that every student irrespective of department complete the outreach program in second year, intended to form more complete human persons. The program takes students to slums and backward areas in and around Chennai to acquaint them with the sufferings of the people and to serve in small ways to better the living conditions. The program awards 3 credits.