B'luru Institute 1st In India to Join Elite Mgmt Network - IIM - B

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B'luru Institute 1st In India to Join Elite Mgmt Network

Bengaluru's Ind an Institute of Management IIM-B) students would be given an option of taking courses at Yale, Berkeley , London School of Economics and other top global business schools.

The Global Network for Advanced Management GNAM), which has 28 top global management schools as its members, has begun vir ual classroom sessions, known as small network open courses (SNOC), for students of its member institutions.

IIM-B hosted a GNAM meet, which concluded on Tuesday . IIM-B is the only Indian business school that is a member of GNAM.

Sourav Mukherji, deanprogrammes, IIM-B, gave the example of a course on inclusive business models, which IM-B will host on this network, to explain how it will work. Students from any of he 28 institutes can register or the course and Mukherji eaches it through videocon erencing at fixed times.

Similarly , faculty from oth er top management institutes that are members of GNAM will offer different courses and students in any corner of the world can sign up.

The courses will be conducted in 20 sessions of 90 minutes each. “The advantage of SNOC is that students can learn courses, which are not offered in their own schools and can interact live with people from around the world during the sessions,“ said Mukherji.

GNAM launched SNOC last year and has conducted around 20 courses. The courses can be taken as an elective as part of the MBA programme. GNAM also holds GNAM Week for students to visit member B-schools for a week and learn different courses for free.

Edward A Snyder, dean of Yale School of Management, said, “The beauty of the network is that no money changes hands. There is no bureaucracy .We operate on mutual respect.“

“From this network IIM-B can get more faculty from top schools. We can have special courses to create connections, which will provide more opportunities for students,“ said Sushil Vachani, director, IIM-B 

Source | Times of India | 18 November 2015

Research top priority for IIM-B

Director Sushil Vachani says the GNAM network, will allow IIM-B faculty to exchange ideas with counterparts from other institutes and create a favourable environment for research

The Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIM-B) is working to improve the quality of research at the institute by creating a favourable ecosystem, and by looking to leverage its connections with global institutes, director Sushil Vachani said. 

IIM-B is the only business school in India to be part of the Global Network for Advanced Management (GNAM), a pool of top 28 business schools like Yale School of Management, London School of Economics and INSEAD.

“We want to be more research-oriented because if you have a good research ecosystem, you have thought leadership. But it is difficult to attract and keep outstanding faculty with the salaries we are allowed to disburse. So we have to provide a vibrant research ecosystem and we are working on it,” said Vachani on the sidelines of the 8th GNAM meet in Bengaluru. 

In the past year, Vachani said they have tried to offer support by reducing the teaching load for faculty interested in pursuing research, providing more funding and by bringing strong collaborators from global universities. In 2014, IIM-B faculty members and research scholars had 79 publications in academic journals, up from 52 in 2010. 

Vachani said the GNAM network, will allow IIM-B faculty to exchange ideas with counterparts from other institutes and create a favourable environment for research.

The other challenge that Vachani flagged is to increase student diversity—in terms of raising the number of women and having more people from non-engineering backgrounds. About 90% of IIM-B students have an engineering background and only 27% of its students are women. To address the issue of diversity, IIMs in July decided that the Common Admission Test (CAT) would include descriptive questions in 2016, in addition to the existing multiple-choice format. 

But Vachani feels descriptive answers are a bit of a challenge because as many as 218,664 will take the CAT this year and it is difficult to have a fair and accurate system to assess such a large number of aspirants. 

“The change in format can have an impact on diversity but only if you have a way of doing it well,” he said. 

But there are other ways by which an institute can boost diversity. Edward A. Snyder, dean and William S. Beinecke professor of economics and management at Yale School of Management, said they have been able to increase the number of women to 40% through scholarships. 

“We have taken a conscious decision to increase scholarships. Most of the schools in the US give a disproportionately large share of scholarships to women. Women get an average of 10% more discount ( on course fees) than men,” he said. 

To increase the number of students from other backgrounds, Synder said Yale had begun reserving spots in the MBA programme for people from other backgrounds. 

Synder founded GNAM in 2012 to help students and faculty collaborate globally. The networks allows students across campuses to take an online course offered by any institute for a 10-week term or attend classes on a course of their choice at a partner institute for a week.

Source | Mint – The Wall Street Journal | 18 November 2015

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Pralhad Jadhav

Khaitan & Co