K.S. Babai, secretary of Meenakshi Sundararajan Engineering College, passed away on Thursday. She was 81. Her sister, K.S. Lakshmi, is the secretary of Meenakshi College for Women.
Born as the second of four sisters and a brother, she set store much by academic achievements. She completed B.Sc., in Mathematics from Stella Maris College and was among the first few women engineers. She graduated in B.E. civil engineering from the College of Engineering, Guindy (now one of the four units of Anna University), in 1966 with a first class., said her nephew V.N. Sriram.
Ms. Babai had an M.S. (by Research) in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology - Madras in 1980. Two decades later, she did Ph. D., from Annamalai University in Environmental Engineering in 2013.
Ms. Babai, began her teaching career, spanning 38 years, in the Dharmambal Government Polytechnic College in Chennai, became its principal and after she retired from government service, she became the principal of Meenakshi Sundararajan Engineering College that her father K.S. Sundararajan had founded. “She believed in teacher autonomy. Her concern was that teachers should teach without having to rely on templates and let students benefit from the process,” said an educationist who had observed her work for many years.
She was a stickler for discipline who did not take it lightly when parents defended their child’s digressions. She motivated girls to stay on a par with the boys and expected them to be enterprising. When a woman graduated in civil engineering, she advised her to take up a field engineer’s position in a West Asian country. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she ensured that at least a dozen bright students from the college participated in the national-level hackathon to develop prototypes for ventilators.
She underwent treatment for cancer at the Cancer Institute and shared her admiration for the renowned oncologist V. Shanta, who she credited with for her recovery.
