Rajagopal Shantaram, Ph.D.
Mott Community College students are now able to fully enjoy the college experience
at a more robust student life center, thanks to a wonderful gift by Dr. Rajagopal
Shantaram. In September 2014, the MCC campus community gathered together to honor
the generous support of Dr. Shantaram and his wife, Chandrika. The college’s Student
Life Center was dedicated and renamed to the G. Radhabai and AV Rajagopal Student
Life Center in honor of Dr. Shantaram’s loving parents. Education has always been
important to this great family. Dr. Shantaram, The Foundation for Mott Community College
board member and retired MCC instructor, learned the value of education from his parents.
They provided him with the inspiration to look to education as the pathway to success
and a sound future. After working as an MCC faculty member more than 30 years and
leaving such a monumental gift, Dr. Shantaram has stated that his decision to give
to MCC was an easy one for him: the MCC community has always embraced him and his
family, so he was pleased to express his gratitude. Dr. Shantaram was born in India,
graduating from high school in 1955. He went on to pursue a B.S. in Mathematics (Ferguson
College, 1959), and an M. S. in Statistics (Poona University, 1961). From 1961 to
1963, he worked as a statistician in the National Chemical Labs, then left India for
advanced study in math on a scholarship at the McGill University in Montreal, Canada,
then transferred to Pennsylvania State University in 1964 and completed the Ph.D.
in math in 1966; taught for five years at the State University of New York at Stony
Brook in Long Island and later came to teach in the math department at UM-Flint in
1971. Subsequently, he decided to go to Wayne State University where he obtained a
computer science master’s degree and moved to the computer science department at UM-Flint.
The entire time that he has been in the Flint area, he has been teaching math, “off
and on” at MCC. After 41 years at UM-Flint, he retired from there in 2012. In 2014,
he decided to retire from MCC, but has confessed that he still finds himself “teaching
occasionally.”
