ISB keen on self sufficiency in teaching faculty

The Indian School of Business (ISB), the five-year-old premier B-school founded and supported by leading lights of the Indian corporate world and global companies and relying mostly on visiting faculty from all over the world, has as its ultimate objective increasing its resident faculty to two-thirds or even three-fourths, according to M. Rammohan Rao, Dean.

The present structure of predominance of visiting faculty offers scope for building the reputation of the ISB, in which Wharton School, Kellogg School of Management and London Business School are leading associates. It also helps Indian students and faculty to familiarise themselves with the global business and academic environment at a time when India is in a stage of transition to a globalising economy, Prof Rao said.

Interacting with a group of invited journalists from different parts of the country at its sprawling 260-acre campus here on Friday, Prof. Rao said once the school was firmly established on the world map, it would raise its cadre of resident faculty from about 20 at present to about 45, constituting the majority of the faculty. He said that in the task of attracting world class talent, the ISB faced the task of competing with business schools in Singapore which had greater financial resources and certain tax advantages.

Ajit Rangnekar, Deputy Dean, ISB, said that in addition to the four Centres of Excellence that the ISB had already started, namely, those dealing with entrepreneurship development, analytical finance, capital market and microfinance, global logistics and manufacturing strategies, it proposed to open two centres devoted to strategic marketing and leadership training and management. From a student strength of 126 in its first batch of MBA, the strength of the outgoing batch was 418 and the students also represented ever greater diversity in terms of industry sectors in which they had worked. The share of women students was also increasing. Emphasis on research and combination of world class quality with relevance to the Asian and Indian contexts were important features the school's programmes and syllabus, Dr Rangnekar said. Apart from its one-year residential flagship PG programme in management, it offered general as also customised executive programmes for corporates and a post-doctoral fellowship programme.

According to V. Chandrasekar, Executive Director of the ISB's Wadhwani Centre for Entrepreneurship Development, the centre is working with the Department of Science and Technology of the Union government and the Andhra Pradesh government under two different programmes for developing business models for technological innovation and engineering design, respectively. It is also helping projects to find venture capital support with the involvement of U.S.-based TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs).

Courtesy : The Hindu