Mangaluru: Amid nostalgia, Science students who passed out of the erstwhile Government First Grade College at Hampankatta half a century ago came together and instituted an endowment fund of ₹ 3 lakh in the college here on Wednesday. It is for awarding scholarships to three top scorers in Mathematics.

They were all students of the 1964-67 batch. The education institution is now called the University College. It entered its 150th year on September 20, 2017. It became the University College after Mangalore University took it over as its constituent college.

Of the 26 students of the batch, 19, who are senior citizens now, were present on the occasion. They handed over a cheque for ₹ 3 lakh to college principal Udaya Kumar Irvathur as endowment fund. Incidentally, 2017 is the golden jubilee year of that batch. Top scorers in Mathematics in the I, II and III year of the three-year B.Sc degree course will get ₹ 5,000 each from the fund.

The alumni chose to award the scholarship to Mathematics because they were all Mathematics major students and three among them had bagged ranks in the final year (1967). The college was under Mysore University then. As the first scholarship, they handed over a cheque for ₹ 5,000 to Megha, a I year B.Sc student who scored 99.5 % marks in Mathematics in the pre-university final examination in 2016-17.

Meanwhile, Vasundhara, a retired Botany professor of the same college, on Wednesday handed over a cheque for ₹ 50,000 as endowment fund in the name of late Gomathi, an English professor of the college, to Mr. Irvathur for awarding prize money to the top scorer in Optional English in the first four semesters.