Salesian missionaries came to Tranquebar in 1901 with a noble vision of empowering girls hailing from economically socially and culturally backward classes. Tranquebar is a coastal belt embodied by many remote undeveloped villages without any transport connections. Ninety percent of inhabitants of this geographical location are fisher folks and scheduled cast who are under privileged and unprivileged. To educate and empower these marginalized and socially peripheral youth a selfless and visionary drive was required. Thus the salesian missionaries landed in Tranquebar in 1901 and started the St. Theres’s girls high school in 1901.The Salesian sisters went street by street and alley by alley to counsel and motivate the girls to come and study in the school. Many fisher folks and scheduled caste girls were educationally, socially and culturally ameliorated and brought up. Then they had started a Teacher training institute in the year 1944. Thousands of students from these backgrounds and also many orphans and semi orphans coming out of this school and from other convents were trained in the institute. Many of these destitutes were adopted by the sisters and transformed in to social wellbeing. But to their utter surprise it was found that they only partially succeeded since majority of the youth did not or could not go beyond the school level due to some ethnic problems. Parents were found hesitant in letting their kids do their higher education mainly due to cost of education and distant location of colleges. Thus they strived hard to start a women’s college to offer higher education locally at an affordable cost and also some times for some at free of cost. This noble visionary pressure in their heart gave birth to the present St. Theresa’s Arts and Science College for women in Tharangambadi itself in 2017 overcoming the afore said two main barriers. Started with 17 students in 2017 with only five courses , the college has now grown up to the state of offering nine under graduate courses and three post graduate courses with a total strength of eight hundred students within a short span of eight years competing with economically affluent and educationally sound and long experienced colleges in this district. We are not only teaching and covering the academic syllabi of university but also giving training to the students on soft skills, communicative English, inter-personal skills, computer skills covering current trend such as AI in order to make our students sound in all aspects and to turn them to be employable and to be fit to any sphere of employment market. Every year we are organizing job oriented training through famous and familiar organizations such as RACE, Unatti, Varanda, Hope foundation etc. Our students won state first and second prizes in archery, Kabbadi and also got university ranks. More than fifty percent of the teachers are Ph.D holders. Ours is the first SF College in Tamilnadu to have got government funded NSS unit in 2022. Our college is also blessed with an experienced academic as Principal with 37 years of teaching and research experience and 25 years of Army wing NCC service in the rank of Major.

To develop our college further and to lead our college to NAAC accreditation – We have started constructing a common auditorium costing a financial outlay of Rupees eight crores. We ply eight buses to bring students from remote coastal villages not covered by public buses. We have set up Panels in the class rooms to teach from web sources using AI technology. We have digitized general library. We have NSS, YRC, Leo club, Eco club, Anti ragging club, Electoral club, ICC. We also adopted a nearby village as an extension of our social activity to bring the inhabitants therein up in all aspects. Our next and immediate plan is to have a research center and two PG courses viz., MBA and MCA.

On this occasion I would like to express my sincere thanks to the formarly Provincial and Founder president Rev.Sr. Maria who founded this college, Rev. Sr. Sebestina the present provincial and the president for her continuous encouragement and all round support , I extend our gratitude to Rev. Sr. Matilda @ Karuna, the secretary of the college for her tireless efforts in promoting this college. We thankfully acknowledge the contribution of Sr. Vincent Amala, as the administrator and an English teacher. With the pleasure of presenting a brief profile of the college, I wish this institution a prosperous future and sky high progress.