Started as a lower secondary school in 1889, the founder, the first Vicar Apostolic of Thrissur, Mar Adolphus Edwin Medlycott, named it St. Thomas’ College. The college started to function in the compound of present-day Bishop's House compound. In 1919, it was raised to a second-grade college in arts, affiliated to the University of Madras.[3] The college was elevated as a first-grade college by the University of Madras in April 1925, and it is the second non-government college in Kerala to achieve that status.
The buildings of the college were constructed in a phased manner. Rev. Medlycott has given a description about the college at the time of his return in 1896 as below:
The bishop on taking charge found that there were practically no schools, ... he took early steps to open as many elementary parish schools as possible; within nine years (1888-96) the vicariate was provided with no less than 231 elementary parish schools for both sexes, educating over 12,000 children, besides a high school (St. Thomas's College), with 95 students;.... plans were prepared to house the above college in a handsome structure.[4]
The first building of the college is the one which is having the tower. Menacherry Hall was built in the year 1941. The Science Block (present day Academic Block on the opposite side of the road) was built in 1956.
In 2004, St. Thomas' was accredited with a B++ grade by NAAC, an autonomous organization instituted by the UGC. In September 2010, the college was re-accredited with A grade by NAAC. The college attained A Grade in its NAAC reaccreditation in 2016. In October 2022, the college attained A++ grade in its fourth cycle of NAAC accreditation.
The year 2018-2019 was celebrated as Sathyaprayan 1919-2019, the centennial as second grade college and the commemoration was inaugurated by Shri Ram Nath Kovind, President of India, on 7 August 2018.
Academic programmes
The college offers graduate, postgraduate and Ph.D. level programmes in a wide range of subjects. There are twenty-four teaching departments[5] (including ten research departments[6] and the thirteen postgraduate departments[7]) which encompass 140 teachers.
The Department of Physics was started in 1922 within three years of the establishment of the college itself. In 1951 a B.A Degree in Physics was started (later changed to BSc) was started with the affiliation of the Madras University. In 1961 MSc Physics (of Kerala University) was started which was a rare course in those days (one among four colleges in Kerala then). This Department offers bachelor's degrees and master's degrees in physics.
Department of Zoology
The department of Zoology, established in 1957, was affiliated to the University of Kerala. Post Graduate course was introduced in 1969 with entomology as the special paper. The department was approved as a recognized research center under university of Calicut in 1974 and is enriched with a full-fledged Research laboratory supported by Department of Science and Technology.
Department of Statistics
In the year 1955, the degree course in B.A. statistics was started under the Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics affiliated to the University of Madras. The B.A. course was converted to three-year B.Sc. course in statistics in 1958 under the University of Kerala. The Department of Statistics was established in the year 1984. This department offers bachelor's degrees, master's degrees and doctoral studies (PhD).
Department of Library and Information Studies
The Department of Library and Information Studies has two constituents: (1) the library which supplements the academic, intellectual, informational, inspirational, spiritual and recreational requirements of the academia with its rich resources and services, and (2) the department of information studies which offers various academic programmes.
The College Library provides open access to its documents and any member can browse through the collections which are arranged according to Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC). The library provides an online catalogue to trace these books. The members can also access scholarly literature which is available online through National Library and Information Services Infrastructure for Scholarly Content (N-LIST) of UGC-INFLIBNET. Through N-LIST, members can access to 6,000+ journals, 1,99,500+ ebooks under N-LIST and 6,00,000 ebooks through National Digital Library of India. The College Library houses 30 terminals of computers for the use of students and faculty. The library provides reference, scholarly literature search services and similarity check for plagiarism. The seating capacity of the library is 408 which include carrels, research cubicles and learning stairs.
The academic Department of Information Studies offers the Postgraduate Certificate Programme in Information Studies. The programme is delivered entirely online using virtual learning platform and consists of three modules: information literacy, academic writing and communication, and intellectual property and its management. The programme is first of its kind in India.
Training on electronic reference management and awareness about web research profiles, citation metrics, intellectual property rights, ethical methods of research and publishing, pseudo-journals and plagiarism are also imparted by the department.
In the first quarter of 2020, the department started to offer the UGC approved two credit course Research and Publication Ethics online through St Thomas E-learning Platform (STEP), the Moodle instance of the college. Later it was offered online in the month of August in 2020 and in the following years and was attended by about 900 participants from different parts of India.
Doctoral Studies (PhD)
The college is offering research programmes under the following ten departments:
