Foreign faculty, a new mantra for emerging B-schools

(prHWY.com) May 9, 2012 - Mysore, India -- As international perspective for managerial roles becomes increasingly important in the globalised economy today, Indian B-schools are not only inviting visiting faculty from abroad but also hiring them as regular faculty to enhance global outlook of their curriculum and pedagogy.

While inviting faculty from foreign University to teach students at Indian B-schools has been prevalent for long now, a number of recent initiatives by emerging B-schools in the country show faculty from abroad joining Indian B-schools as regular and resident faculty.

Some Indian B-schools have even gone beyond by bringing faculty from abroad to head their management programmes.

For example, Jindal Global Business School (JGBS) appointed a foreign Dean to head its MBA programmes. Prior to his current role in JGBS, Dr. Michael J. Barnes, who is working as resident Dean at the campus of GJBS, was Dean of the Global MBA programme at S P Jain Centre of Management - conducted jointly at campuses in Dubai and Singapore. Before this, he was the founding Academic Dean of Hult International Business School in Dubai. He had previously been the inaugural John F. Fiedler-BorgWarner Endowed Chair of Global Business Studies in the College of Business Administration at Kent State University, Ohio.

Though the faculties from abroad work in tandem with faculty members from India, they are playing crucial role in defining curriculum and bringing international perspective. They also bring in the global elements of teaching and training to the B-schools in the country.

Dr Barnes feel that developing Global competency among students is important and the "Idea of JGBS is to move towards a business school curriculum which is highly seeded with global perspective, and global case studies interpreted within the course."

There are many initiatives where students of Indian B-schools are getting international perspective from foreign faculty members.

Italy's top global B-school SDA Bocconi which starts its two-year MBA programme at Mumbai International School of Business (MISB) Bocconi in Mumbai this July, has created a framework where a part of its core faculty member will comprise experienced faculty from SDA Bocconi itself.

Dr. Stefano Caselli, who is the Professor of Banking and Insurance at SDA, is the Academic Director of MISB Bocconi.

"The faculty is based on three different pillars: Bocconi faculty moving from Milan to Mumbai with the idea to spend a significant time with students in India, tenured faculty in the process to be recruited at international level and local faculty working full time at MISB," says Dr. Stefano Caselli. "The relevance of the Bocconi faculty, characterized by big names highly reputed for their CV at international level, is the stronger guarantee of the quality of MISB programme and in the short-medium run this faculty will represent the core of the faculty system itself," he says, adding, "Faculty members are ready to fly from Milan and going to be resident in Mumbai to work with the students at MISB."

In yet another initiative, GMR Foundation has launched a B-school in collaboration with Canada's Top B-school Schulich School of Business where the Schulich will develop the learning environment and academic infrastructure and the GMR Group will provide the land and physical infrastructure.

"Under the arrangement that we have, The GMR Campus of the Schulich School of Business will provide the same international look and feel as that of Schulich's Toronto campus. The Schulich School of Business will bring first-rate facilities, international faculty, and an internationally-focused curriculum. The students will be taught by a uniform pool of Schulich faculty," says Dr. V Raghunathan, CEO, GMR Varalakshmi Foundation, Hyderabad & former Professor of Finance, IIM Ahmedabad.

Some institutes are conducting joint programmes with faculties from foreign universities participating actively throughout the programme.

GDGWI has forged an alliance with Lancaster University to award student an internationally recognized degree. Through the alliance, the institute gets faculty members from Lancaster University who teach students at the institute. According to Dr. Vijay Gupta, Director, G D Goenka World Institute, the partnership was established in 2009 and combines the strengths of the two institutes.

"Through the partnership, GDGWI students get access to Lancaster's academic structure that emphasizes criticality in learning rather than just fact checking and information seeking. The bonds are further strengthened by a regular exchange of faculty and students between Lancaster and GD Goenka," he said.

While there are institutes which are focusing more on international management lessons and practices, some of the Indian B-schools are completely dedicating themselves to preparing a generation of managers who can be globally competitive in fast changing market and economy.

Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, which runs executive MBA programmes only, had started this trend a decade back. Most of the faculty members at the institute have either spent a good number of years teaching in B-schools abroad, or have spent long years in research and academic activities with Top B-schools around the world.

Great Lakes which defines its management programmes with a statement - 'Global Mindset Indian Roots', also boasts a high quotient of global perspective as it has a number of faculty members from Top-B-schools abroad who actively participate in conducting programmers at the campus.

Even some of the new B-schools like Mysore-based MYRA school of Business are positioned to be a Business School with international caliber faculty and global curriculum. The B-school which is poised to admit its first batch of 180 students in 2012 is led by Dean Dr. Rajiv Sinha who himself has a distinguished academic career with Top B-schools around the world. Dr. Sinha (Ph.D. 1989, Pennsylvania State University) is also Professor of Marketing and the Lonnie Ostrom Chair in Business at the W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University.

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