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Saturday, May 29, 2010

"Term-II Updates"

Stock check time – results for first term have already started pouring in. As expected, few happy and a little more disappointed souls in the class. The professionalism from the faculty in the providing the key, solutions, marks and feedback has been quite astonishing; something which I have not been exposed to before.

Second term commenced with a revised schedule that resulted in over exposure to Leadership/Macroeconomics/OB in the first 10 days, since the faculty had other engagements in the coming week. Prof N M Agrawal (http://www.iimb.ernet.in/user/85/n-m-agrawal), who heads the PGSEM course, wanted us to submit a 2000 word essay on our leadership experiences that was to be graded. Prof Vasanthi Srinivasan's (http://www.iimb.ernet.in/user/108/vasanthi-srinivasan ) first interaction with us was on the second day of EPGP course, and she picked up from where she left in talking about Organizational Behaviour which has been reworded as "Managing People and Performance in Organizations". Prof Shymal Roy (http://www.iimb.ernet.in/user/105/shyamal-roy ) has an easy and calm demeanour even when he utters absolute cracker-jacks with the straightest of faces, even as he expounds theories on Macroeconomics. The book he has authored is our recommended reading for Macro and is a compact power packed bundle of concepts on GDP, Aggregate Demand and the likes. Prof. B.Mahadevan (http://www.iimb.ernet.in/user/58/b-mahadevanc) , likewise has authored a book of his own and he took the extra pains of ensuring that the latest edition reached us on time. It is also interesting to note that he is a Sanskrit scholar and offers discourses on Bhagavad Gita tailored for modern management weekly once for the students. Prof.Jayanthi Iyer appeared to make our lives easier by categorically stating that last year batch students felt that cost accounting (CA) was one of the easiest courses to sail through. She has however added in a unique concept of preparing for the case handouts from two perspectives that would be evaluated – presentation and commenting/critiquing. No let-up in the intensity overall.

The branding committee initiated few rounds of discussions with the Chairperson, IIM-B website content supervisor to hash out the possible activities as part of the branding activity. International immersion destination now will happen in the land of Samsung/Hyundai/LG – South Korea. The details are being worked out, we have been told that we would be spending considerable time on industry visits in Seoul and Busan based on an itinerary drawn up by KAIST business school (http://www.business.kaist.ac.kr/index.asp?klang=ENG). The added attraction to this visit is an optional extended layover in Hongkong/Macau while returning; obviously at the expense of the students:-) The first draft of the committee formation processes and guidelines has been drawn up and the recommendations /suggestions from the class are being factored in.

Seminar committee went into an over-drive and arranged two seminars from diverse fields within the same week - Derick Jose (http://in.linkedin.com/in/derickjose) from Mindtree talked about significant engagements in the evolution of Mindtree; Siddhartha Chowdri (http://in.linkedin.com/in/hsiddhartha) from Accion spoke about Micro-finance and the current state of MFIs in Indian context. The seminar series itself commenced a few weeks back with a presentation by Krishnan Madhabushi (Subbu from "Second Degree" by Prashant John) from the entrepreneurial venture Kwench. (http://www.kwench.in/)

This term seems to be all about cases and extended typing hours on the laptop, going by the essays and term papers expected of us. So expect few keys on the laptop keyboards to be abused and if you find any alphabet omissions in the days to come, blame it on these assignments !!

- Rajesh Kumar Gunasekaran