Department of Botany is one of the oldest Department of East Calcutta Girls’ College, and was established in the academic year 1995–1996 with the capacity of maximum 20 students in the general course of which 12 students were admitted. Honours course was started in the academic year 2003–2004 with eight students. In 2006 the first Honours batch awarded their degrees by the University of Calcutta. Now the students are guided by six full time faculty members and two laboratory assistants. Associate of senior as well as young enthusiastic faculties satisfactorily caters to the necessary teaching requirements of the Department. With the establishment of West Bengal State University (WBSU) in 2009, the affiliation of the College (and hence, the Department) was shifted to the new University. The Department has been actively engaged in a myriad of curricular and extra-curricular activities throughout the year.

The Department has ICT enabled classrooms. Laboratory facilities are admirable with modern instruments required for conducting practical experiments in under graduate (UG) level. Both central and Departmental library is present. Students and teachers have easy access to all books and journals available in both libraries.

Department has also taken some student development initiatives like, parent teacher meet, regular evaluations through MCQ and class tests, remedial and tutorial classes. Many botanical excursions, like visit to Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden and Central National Herbarium, Shibpur, local excursions in different seasons, a long excursion to different phyto-geographical regions are conducted according to the course curriculum.

The department has collaboration (Educational MOU) with the Post Graduate Department of Botany, Ramkrishna Mission Vivekananda Centenary College, Rahara, for providing practical training/research facilities to the students and faculties.

Our student Baishakhi Saha, was a topper in her B.Sc. Honours final examination held under West Bengal State University in 2018. The progression of our UG students to PG is around 90%. Our alumni are our pride, they got remarkable success in the field of higher studies. Our alumni Bijoya Karmakar (B.Sc., 2007) get awarded Ph.D. from Bose Institute, Kolkata. Our ex-student Susmita Das (B.Sc., 2011), securing the 1 st display_rank in M.Sc. (2013) from West Bengal State University. She received DST-INSPIRE Fellowship in 2015 for securing top display_rank in M.Sc. Recently she has submitted her doctoral thesis in the University of Calcutta for Ph.D. award. She received the “Nasi- Swarna Jayanti Puraskar” in 2019 in the field of Biological Sciences from National Academy of Sciences (NASI, India); she also received “Young Scientist Award” of Indian Society for Plant Physiology (ISPP, New Delhi, India) in 2020. Our former student Tina Roy (B.Sc., 2013) also succeeded in her higher studies. After completing Ph.D. from University of Gour Banga in 2020, recently she working as Project Associate II, Biotechnology Department, CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology, Palampur, Himachal Pradesh, India. A number of our alumni are engaged in different job oriented sectors.