Union Christian College Alumni Association of North America
(A Tax-exempted Non-profit Charitable Organization) / Advisory Board
Dr. A. M. Chacko, Manager
Dr. K. C. Chacko, Advisor
Dr. Varghese John, Principal
Prof. Mathew Koshy, Advisor
Dr. K. E. Leelamma, Advisor
Dr. Titus Mathews, Advisor
Dr. Thara K. Simon, Advisor
Mr. Lal Varghese, Legal Counsel / Board of Directors
Dr. James Jacob, President
Dr. Simon Thomas, Vice President
Mr. Thomas Mathew, Secretary
Dr. Thomas P. Mathew, Treasurer Mrs. Molly Daniel, Member
Dr. K. M. Koshy, Member
Dr. Kamakshi Krishnan, Member
Mr. George P. Kurien, Member
Mr. Alex Mathew, Member
Mr. George Varghese, Member
Dr. Pothen Varghese, Member
NEWSLETTER
Volume I / January, 2010 / Number 1
From the Editor’s Desk…….
I am looking in the rearview mirror, and I see year 2009 in my immediate near vision with some of the previous years and events in the background. What I see are numerous and wonderful, and I am encouraged by each one of the events that took place from time to time in our short lifespan. Needless to say, the last two or three years were a successful time period for the young UCCAANA. Some of you may remember, Bergenfield, NJ was our de facto birthplace, and like a calf that would jump up and start running soon after its birth, we too sprang up and got down to business. We conducted a very successful get-together in Toronto followed by a sumptuous dinner in the summer of 2008 which was attended by a couple of dozens of UCC alumni. Mark your calendar, there’s going to be more in the near future. We had a General Body teleconference at the end of 2008, and we made a conscious decision to conduct a Board meeting at least once every three months. And in one of those recent meetings of the Members of the Board, we decided to institute this Newsletter as our main vehicle of communication. This is our first attempt toward that goal. So here it is, such as it is…
As the Editor of this Newsletter, I want to make a request to all the readers. Please remember, this is your newsletter, and you should be the folks that would contribute to it. The Board was extremely excited about the idea of a Newsletter, and I, as the Editor, have a special interest in making it strictly an electronic document. If nothing else, we have a responsibility to use this new and efficient medium for our communicational purposes, but more importantly, we don’t want to be faulted for killing any more trees than what is absolutely required. Call me a tree-hugger, but I don’t take offense very easily! I am convinced that there are poets, story tellers and writers among us. Be generous, and let’s share all those talents with the rest of our readers. Participate in the life of UCCAANA!
--- George P. Kurien / The President’s Message…….

Dear UC College Alumni and Friends:
It is with great pleasure that I present to you the first edition of our Newsletter. I thank all the contributors, especially our intrepid editor George Kurien, whose hard work and tenacity prevailed to make this happen.
UCCAANA is still in its infancy and many of our ambitious goals are yet to be materialized. However, we are proud of our accomplishments so far, as described elsewhere in this Newsletter.
Many of us in North America have been very fortunate to have had the opportunity to spring forward from our basic education and experiences at UCC to much higher levels. I venture to claim that among all the UCC alumni scattered around the globe, the ones residing in North America have the best life experiences in various disciplines such as health sciences – medicine, pharmaceutics, nutrition, teaching, business ownership, etc. Let us share our wealth of knowledge and experiences with our Alma Mater and its future generations and other alumni and friends. Our Newsletter and website can be used as vehicles to show your participation and willingness to promote our association.
We need your cooperation in the planned publication of a directory of UCC alumni in North America which will be a major undertaking for us in 2010. The directory will help you to renew/maintain closer relationship with your classmates and friends from UCC. In response to our email solicitation last year only 75 alumni responded by filling out the membership application forms. While we are thankful to those who responded promptly, we want to hear from many more of you. Please fill out the Application form attached to this Newsletter and mail/email to our secretary. Please note that free membership in UCCAANA is offered to all UCC alumni and friends of the College.
We would appreciate your comments and suggestions for making our Association more meaningful and vibrant. We look forward to hearing from you.
With warm regards,
James Jacob, Ph.D
President
From Our Secretary… --- Thomas Mathew (NJ)
I am delighted to see that a newsletter is being published by UCCAANA and I congratulate Mr. George P. Kurien for taking the initiative and making this a reality. It is with great pleasure that I write these few lines on the occasion of publishing the first edition of the UCCAANA Newsletter.
My idea of writing on this occasion is not to provide the readers with a full report of our functions and activities, but to reflect on the past with a view to the future of UCCAANA and how my association with it has helped me to reconnect with my alma mater in a way which was not foreseen by me when I was asked to take up the responsibilities as the Secretary.
Union Christian College Alumni Association of North America represents alumni members, faculty and their families living in the United States and Canada. It was formed as a non-profit corporation by obtaining approval from the Secretary of State of Ohio. The efforts to bring together the alumni to the alma mater got a great boost when UCCAANA was officially inaugurated on a beautiful summer evening on September 2, 2007. Dr. A.M. Chacko, former Principal of UCC and a special invitee to the occasion, delivered the inaugural address. His main theme was the importance of sharing intellectual, academic and financial resources from a global perspective. The joyous occasion was reminiscent of my days at UCC on occasions like college anniversary and other events. The inaugural function was attended by alumni members representing three generations spanning over half a century. It was a time for all of us to meet old friends and establish bonds with new alumni members. It was an evening with meaningful discussions, entertainment, dinner and warm interaction among alumni members. UCC was a “home away from home” for me, my brothers and sisters who shared the same college and hostel experience. I was reminded of a bygone era of religious tolerance, simplicity, “secular Christian” ideals, desire for knowledge and respect for teachers. UCC embodied these values and the campus life was a socially and intellectually enriching experience.
As we look forward into the future, there are many challenges facing our association to move ahead in a more meaningful and substantive way and achieve our stated goals and objectives. Formation and inauguration of UCCAANA required hard work and dedication by many of us, but all these are pale in comparison to the tasks and challenges ahead of us. Over the past three years, we have been able to organize well enough to do some work mutually beneficial to UCCAANA and UCC. We have been able to support projects for UCC, UCC library and the Alumni Office by the generous contributions from our members and hope to do more in the future. UCCAANA conducted seminars, channeled funds for UCC and established linkage between the alumni and the alma mater. We are in the process of creating our own website which will be an important step in the right direction. We have been working with UCC in establishing a UCCAANA Educational Trust in Aluva. Trust bylaws were submitted to the UCC for the purposes of registration which has been completed. It is anticipated that the remaining steps will be completed soon. One alumni get-together was arranged in Toronto. We aspired to do more, but fell short of our aspirations. We have created a brochure and formal application form for membership. We have collected addresses and details of our alumni members in North America, but the process is still far from completion. A large number of our alumni members are spread all over America, but we don’t / have accurate details of our members. Also there are other projects which are still incomplete and it is not my intention to list all of them here. Our alumni members have fond memories of their college days and they love their alma mater, but that enthusiasm has not been evident in any tangible manner or form when we try to create an alumni directory, arrange a get-together or cruise. We still don’t have a formal paid membership. The challenge for all of us is to find a realistic approach to solve the problems we face in achieving our goals.
Do we expect our alumni association to function simply as a social net work in North America, or do we expect our organization to rise up to meet our stated goals and objectives in the future? This will be our greatest challenge in the coming years.
VP’s Words…….
---Dr. Simon Thomas, Vice President
Alumni reflection on their alma mater, without fail ends up being filled with much romanticism and nostalgia for the bygone days. Mine is too, reflecting on UCC which played a key role in my basic education and was the launch pad for my professional career nearly a half century ago. However,nostalgia can be an awful bore especially for those whose memories are different from ours. Notwithstanding my preoccupation with romanticism of the ‘good old days’, my interest in an association of the UCC alumni in North America that attempts to connect like-minded people with their own unique UCC experiences, lies in its clearly articulated mission statement. This forum, it is believed, will offer the extraordinary opportunity to share the diverse experiences of multiple generations from the UCC and that sharing can be enriching, enlightening as much as it is educational.It surely will also reveal the evolution of UCC (distinct from the personal, frozen imagery) and its character, how much has changed and how much remains firmly rooted through all these changes.People who wish to learn do so from each other. Sharing the life experiences among the North American UCC alumni will be a glorious learning experience, I believe, as much as it will be fun.
The second aspect embedded in the UCCAANA mission statement is intriguing to me as well. We, who live in these days of globalization, are connected in business, technology and knowledge.The alumni have an opportunity to be connected with the UCC and to make an impact on it to sustain its academic excellence. As alumni, we have an obligation to share our life experiences with successive generations entering the portals of the UCC.Such learning experiences will undoubtedly be supplementary to the rigid academic curriculum of the day. Sharing the alumni intellectual capital with the new generations of UCC will be one of the greatest legacies of the alumni. The newer generations will be better prepared to face the challenges of global and connected world.
To establish such effective connectivity with the alumni community and UCC, we have to consciously build organizational processes and culture. I will be honored to join all of you in pursuing that alumni mission through the UCCAANA. Surely it will be a fun ride.
A Brief History of the UCCAANA
---Dr. Thomas P. Mathew, Treasurer
In 1996, when Dr. A. M. Chacko came to the United States, he visited various cities and met with a few of the alumni of the Union Christian College. He had meetings in New York, New Jersey, Washington, DC, Chicago, North Carolina, and Ohio, and encouraged the alumni to form local chapters in these cities and get active in alumni programs. The enthusiasm thus generated lasted a few years, and slowly there were no activities among the alumni. Then in 2005, Dr. K. C. Chacko of Colorado contacted a few alumni, and took the initiative to organize an association. After several telephone conversations and emails, we decided to form an alumni association.
With the support from our alma mater, we have incorporated the UCCAANA as a non-profit organization in the State of Ohio in April, 2006. Membership in the Association is open to all UCC alumni, their families, faculty, and friends of the College. The main objective of the Association is to promote a meaningful relationship among the UCC alumni in North America, and to maintain closer relations with our college. In addition, the Association will act as a link between UCC and other colleges, universities and research institutions in the United States to promote exchange programs for faculty and students.
The founding organizers were Dr. K. C. Chacko, Colorado (President), Attorney Lal Varghese, Dallas (Vice-President), Mr. George Varghese, NJ (Secretary), and Dr. Thomas P. Mathew, Ohio (Treasurer). We prepared by-laws for the Association, and in June, 2006, with the assistance of Mr. Lal Varghese, we filed for tax exemption with the Internal Revenue Service. In March, 2007, UCCAANA was approved by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) tax exempted non-profit charitable organization.
In 2007, Dr. Kamakshi Krishnan of NJ became the President of the Association, and Mr. Thomas Mathew of NJ became the Secretary. We had the official inauguration of UCCAANA in September, 2007 in Bergenfield (NJ). We were very fortunate to have Dr. A. M. Chacko as our chief guest at the inauguration. He came to the United States just for the inauguration. Since then, the Association has been slowly, but surely, moving forward. In 2008, we formed a focus group of ten UCC alumni and retired UCC faculty to plan our strategy to promote the Association.