NURTURING AN INSTITUTION OF EXCELLENCE BY THE KODAVA EDUCATION SOCIETY

By P.T. Bopanna

It is a matter of pride for the Kodava community that a pre university college set up by the Kodava Education Society has not only achieved 100 per cent results, but bagged the second and third ranks in Kodagu district in Karnataka.

The Coorg Institute of Pre University College (CIPUC) was set up at Halligattu near Ponnampet in 2017 on a sprawling green campus. There are two branches viz. PCMB and PCMC with 60 intakes each. 

Dr Rohini Thimmaiah is the principal and she heads a team of well accomplished teaching faculty.  Students are given personal attention and guidance by the teaching staff.  Parents are kept informed of their children’s progress in academics as well as in other extra-curricular and co-curricular activities. 

CIPUC students regularly win quiz and debating competitions.  The campus offers ample facilities for outdoor and indoor games.

One of the important factors in CIPUC is the coaching given to the students in writing the Common Entrance Test (CET).  The coaching starts from the first year of PUC and it gets intensive in the second year.  CIPUC students invariably emerge with good ranking in CET.

So far four batches have graduated from CIPUC.  Results have been consistently good and there is improvement in the performance year on year.  

Quite a few of the students graduating from PCMC stream join Coorg Institute of Technology (CIT) for a degree in engineering. The training they receive in CIPUC helps them cope very well in the engineering subjects.  Admission for 2022-2023 academic year is in progress. 

FULBRIGHT SCHOLAR AGASTYA MUTHANNA’S DISTINCTION AT HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL

F

By P.T. Bopanna

Agastya Muthanna, a proud son of Kodagu (Coorg) in Karnataka, who was awarded the Fulbright Scholarship, has graduated from the Harvard Business School in the United States with flying colours.

Agastya, son of Maneyapanda Nirad and Deepa Muthanna, was admitted to the Harvard Business School in 2019 and the same year, he was awarded the Fulbright Scholarship. At Harvard, he was a co-president at the Global Business Club. He currently works for McKinsey in London.

After completing his schooling at Aditi School, Bangalore, Agastya was admitted to Cambridge University in the UK. He was awarded a full HSBC Scholarship for his undergraduate education. He was employed by McKinsey – a management consulting firm and worked on projects related to environmental sustainability.

Agastya is a keen scuba diver and has represented his college in squash. He has always been focused on environmental and sustainable issues. He was selected from school as the British Council Climate Change Champion.

He has also been associated with the Union ministry of environment and forests and helped draft legislation around reintroducing the Cheetah in India and protecting the Ganges river dolphin.

At Cambridge University, Agastya was elected as President of the Marshall Society of Economics, one of the oldest and most active societies.

He is married to Dr Olivia Muthanna a medical graduate from Oxford University.  They have a young son Felix Muthanna.

Two of Agastya’s great grand fathers were Chief Conservators of forests. Maneyapanda Appachu Muthanna in Bangalore and Biddanda Chengappa in the Andaman Islands. Agastya’s father Nirad was an honorary wildlife warden in Coorg.

‘COORG PERSON 2020’ DR SANJANA KATTERA COMPLETES HER MASTERS FROM HARVARD UNIVERSITY

By P.T. Bopanna

‘Coorg Person of the Year’ Dr Sanjana Kattera (in picture) has completed her Masters in public health from the prestigious Harvard University in the United States.

Dr Sanjana, member of the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine trial team, had won the Coorg Person title in 2020, perhaps the youngest to win the title.

While pursuing her masters in Harvard University, she got an opportunity to work with the Children’s Foundation of Mississippi, where she was able to develop a policy memo addressing and proposing changes in legislation to improve the health outcomes in foster youth.

After graduation from Harvard, she has secured an internship to work on Type 1 diabetes with Pittsburg University and has been posted in Dhaka, Bangladesh to conduct the study.

Further, she has also been selected to take up a prestigious fellowship in the UK to pursue her passion in enhancing population health measures in children and adolescents with disabilities which she will start in September.

Dr. Sanjana, daughter of Dr. Suresh Kattera and Smitha Suresh, did her schooling in the United World College South East Asia (UWCSEA) in Singapore. She studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh in the UK.