The college motto is “Lighted to Lighten” and hence the appropriateness of the little earthenware Indian lamp. From such a lamp, with its flame of fire constantly renewed by the sacrifice of the oil poured in, its need of shelter from the wind, its flame kindled afresh every evening from a source of light, comes the suggestion of a life, spending itself to transform itself into service, flickering but not failing in the midst of temptation, existing only to give.

Our Founder-Principal, Dr Miss Eleanor McDougall succintly stated the aim of the college as follows -"We can do no better service to India, than to liberate the energies of wisdom and devotion which are latent in a woman and to infuse into them the vital ideals of Christianity ". Under her able leadership, Women's Christian College started functioning on 7th July 1915 with 41 students and 7 members of Faculty in a rented building named 'Hyde Park'. On 5th July 1916 the College moved to its own campus of 19 acres attached to an imposing building called 'Doveton House' on the banks of the Cooum in Nungambakkam.The College from its inception provided a training ground for formal and informal relations between Staff and Students through study, cultural activities, debates, games and religious observance. At present, the College has a strength of around 2694 students and 147 Faculty members and is a government aided minority institution.

With the tremendous progress achieved through the years the College planned for autonomy and was granted the same by the University Grants Commission. Since 1982 the College has been functioning as an autonomous institution affiliated to the University of Madras. In the year 1994 the College was selected by the University Grants Commission to offer Vocational Training Courses in Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology in the Botany and Zoology Departments respectively at the undergraduate level. In 2001 the college began the B.Sc. Nutrition, Food Service Management & Dietetics (Vocational Stream) course. The College began self-financing courses since 1997 and now offers M.A. (Communication), M.Sc.(Physics with specialisation in electronics), B.Com, B.B.A. and B.C.A., B.A. Corporate Economics, B.Sc. Visual Communication, M.Sc. Biotechnology, M.Sc. Information Technology and M.Sc. Computer Science & Technology. Since many of the graduates went on to take up teaching jobs, a daughter institution for training graduates to teach was started in 1937 with a member of Faculty, Miss Nora Brockway as its first Principal. It was called the Saint Christopher's Training College for women and moved from our campus to its own campus in Vepery.
These details are retrieved from www.wcc.edu.in