The Founder of Seethalakshmi Ramaswami College Padmabhushan Shri. N. Ramaswami Ayyar started Savithri Vidyasala Hindu Girls' Higher Secondary School in the year 1938, with a noble purpose of providing education to girls in the background of Indian tradition and culture. In the year 1951, he decided to set up a women’s institution for higher studies with a view to preserve the environment he created in the high school. Seethalakshmi Ramaswami College came into being with a strength of 11 girls and grew into a full-fledged college in 1956. The Founder’s dream of women empowerment came true in an emphatic fashion recently when Smt.Nirmala Sitharaman, an Economics alumna of the college became the Defence Minister of India in September 2017.
The college which had a humble beginning in 1951 now offers 24 Undergraduate programmes, 15 Postgraduate programmes, 7 M.Phil. programmes, 8 Ph.D. programmes, 1 Community College course (Sericulture), and 5 B.Voc. programmes. The college has been awarded research funds from DBT under Star College Scheme to the tune of 18 lakhs, to strengthen the Undergraduate Life Science programmes (Botany and Zoology) and 1 crore DST-FIST college level category I, comprising all Science departments. The department of Mathematics received 28 lakhs, department of Physics received 38 lakhs and department of Chemistry received 32 lakhs at department level DST-FIST fund.
Seethalakshmi Ramaswami College was one of the first colleges in Tiruchirappalli to opt for autonomous status in the year 1987. This has allowed us to experiment and innovate in curricular aspects. Another first to its credit is that Seethalakshmi Ramaswami College happened to be one of the first 7 colleges in the country to be accredited by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) in 1999. In the most recent assessment by NAAC, the college has been re-accredited with an “A+” grade (4th Cycle) in recognition of its all round academic excellence, research programmes and social outreach activities.