“You, students, are in the phase of performing a magic to change your course of future,” said District Collector K. J. Praveen Kumar.

Speaking at the Thiagarajar College of Engineering Distinguished Alumni Awards 2025 event here on Friday, he said, though magic would definitely take place in everyone’s life, the magician in you, should be able to identify and perform the magic in their college and succeeding days.

“As a school student I did not even have an iota of what I would study and what I would become. From there I become an engineer and later an Indian Administrative Officer,” he observed.

Though he remarked that motivating the current generation students was not an easy task, he appealed to the students to take lessons from their alumni who had succeeded in diverse fields and returned to the college again as life time achievers.

“Even when I know that TCE plays a key role in vetting many government programmes like bio-mining, I have not personally visited the institution,” he stated.

But, the first visit to the college for the event made him think of associating with the college, Mr. Praveen Kumar said.

The college which was started as an aided college and was later expanded to include self-financing colleges has become one of the significant educational destination for the district.

“This institution has been a key player in contributing some of the great minds like former ISRO scientist S. Nambi Narayanan to the nation,” he added.

Alumni like Padma Shree Awardee and former ISRO scientists N. Vedachalam, Mr. Nambi Narayanan, among others were recognised at the event.

Uma Kannan, Member of Governing Council, TCE, among others were present during the event.