The English department of Shillong College was started in 1956, obviously the same year the College took its birth. Late Shri Rajendra Lal Choudhury, a veteran advocate and an educationist of the town, and Shri Subhash Chatterjee of Lady Keane College were the first teachers of English in the College. They also played a pioneering role in the establishment of the College as well. A galaxy of celebrated teachers of English then came forward to make the foundation rock-solid, and this included Prof. G. G. Swell, Prof. Kapila Chatterjee,Prof. S. B. Bhattacharjee, Shri C. P. Sinha and many others. Prof. B.N. Nanda, M.A., LL.B, joined the college as the first full time lecturer in 1958, later to be followed by Shri Natarajan, Shri Sambhu Banerjee and Shri B. K. Gupta Bhaya. With the expansion in academic activities and the opening of Science Section, more teachers joined the department and Smt. Dipali Chakraborty (retired), Shri Jagadish Purkayastha (a Shakespearean scholar, now retired) and Dr. Subir Sen Gupta (who did Ph. D. on ‘Romanticism in Unromantic Shaw’, now retired) went on to illuminate the department.Smt. Mamata Bordoloi (retired) joined the department in 1967 and later Shri Nirmal Kr. Sarkar in 1969 (retired as Vice Principal).

The department presently consists of a seven member team of teachers
and they are:

Smt. Smritirekha Das (Head), Dr.(Mrs.) Dhira Bhowmik, Smt. Bobbina Wanniang,Smt. I. S. Warjri, Shri L. M. Pariat, Smt. Amanda Basaiawmoit and Smt.G. Janet Dkhar. Smt. S. Das is a creative writer and poet and contributes to anthologies of national and international repute and Dr. D. Bhowmik with a lot of research publications is an enthusiastic academician. Smt.B. Wanniang ably accompanies her pianist colleague Smt. I. S. Warjri.Sincere to the core, both of them have impressed upon the minds of the learners as successful teachers. Shri Pariat finds time to remain engaged with extra-curricular activities in addition to his literary assignments,while our new colleagues Smt. Basaiawmoit and Smt. Dkhar are showing a lot of enthusiasm in the field of academics, sports and cultural activities besides proving their worth as effective teachers. English is taught in the College at all three streams of Science, Arts and Commerce along with the Honours courses which were started in the year 1968. The English department olds regular class-room discussions, group discussions as well as paper presentations as a measure to improve students’ power of perception and communication skill and the result of these efforts as obvious in good performances by our students in the Board/University examinations and other competitions organised by different organisations from time to time. All the seven members of the department make concerted efforts to improve students’ perceptive level, linguistic skills and integrated personality development to enable them to grow into successful persons by blending intellectual efficacy and noble human virtues.