DIRECTOR’S REPORT
Respected Shri B K Jhawar, Chairman of this ceremony,
Distinguished Chief Guest, Shri Susim Mukul Datta; Board of
Trustees, Members of the Trust; Members
of the Board of Governors; The Secretary General; Members of Advisory Board;
Members of Academic Council; Members of Academic Advisory Board; Members of
Industry Institute Collaboration Advisory Board; Principal; Academic Advisor;
Distinguished Professors; Members of Faculty and Staff; Distinguished Guests, Members
of Press and Media and Dear Students and their families.
It is my pleasure to have the privilege to introduce the
Chief Guest of this 5th Annual Convocation of Calcutta Business
School, Shri Susim Mukul Datta who is present with us today. Shri S M Datta is
a towering personality in the field of management, respected by all, both for
academic institutions of excellence as well as for corporates with global
eminence. He is Chairman of Court of
Governors of Administrative Staff College of India. He was Chairman of IIM
Banglaore (1995-2005) and Founder Chairman of Goa Institute of Management
(1993- 2006). He was a member of the first Review Committee of IIMs, HRD
Ministry, Government of India. He is non-Executive Chairman of Castrol India
Ltd, Philips India Ltd, Peerless General Finance and Investment Company Ltd to
name a few. Shri Datta was the Chairman
of Hindusthan Lever Ltd as well as of the Unilever Group of Companies in India
and Nepal from 1990-1996. In addition, he was the Director on the Board of
numerous companies which are globally acclaimed. Shri Datta is past President
of Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Council of EU Chambers of
Commerce in India, The Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industries to name a few.
Shri S M Datta graduated with Honours in
Chemistry from the prestigious Presidency College, Kolkata and obtained his
post graduate Degree in Science & Technology from the Kolkata University.
He is a Chartered Engineer, Fellow of the Institution of Engineers (India),
Fellow of the Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers and Honorary Fellow of All
India Management Association. Susimda, we are grateful for your kind presence
as the Chief Guest of this occasion.
May I request all my students to kindly stand up and
give a standing ovation to our Distinguished Chief Guest with a round of
applause.
I now turn towards placing the Director’s Report in
this 5th Annual Convocation of Calcutta Business School.
Calcutta Business School has set itself different from
the bandwagon of other business schools which are mushrooming all over the
country. There are number of parameters which place us on a different pedestal in
the league of business schools. The School is autonomous albeit AICTE approved
and developed curricula which will not only provide the basic background and
acumen for business operation, but also will stimulate the students independent
thought process to approach the vast arena of management from various novel perspectives.
This is evident the way our curriculum is structured in several clusters and
the type of innovative course we offered. In addition to the 28 core courses, there
are five clusters of specializations and each cluster has got 8 elective
courses on varied areas of interest. In short, we provide wide range of choices
to the students to develop their core competencies in conjunction with their
inherent talents. We are an institute
where apart from regular interactive classroom lectures, pedagogy is more leaned
towards case based studies, group projects, group activities and assignments,
business simulation games and working on the floors of industries and markets. Residential
structure of our institution and close linkage with the industry through
industry institute collaboration board, where more than a dozen of reputed industries
take active interest have helped us in setting up this kind of unique learning
methodology. The institute gives lot of emphasis on values and ethics. We have
unique courses such as, ‘History of Human and Business Development’ and ‘Total
Quality Management’ and I am to announce that we have constituted special
category medals for the students who have excelled in such areas which helps in
developing ‘better human being’ which is the fundamental criteria of developing
good managers for the future. I am happy to announce some of our graduating
students shall be receiving medals in this convocation having excelled in these
areas.
The institution is equipped with a state of the art
library with books and journals, numbers exceeding 6550 and having access to
more than 10000 e-books, e-journals and real time stock market information. The
library system functions like issue, receipt, cataloguing, entry, viewing etc.
is fully automated and operates on ERP platform. We have recently become the
institutional member of DELNET which shall allow us to access their huge
collection of e-books, e-journals, databases, videos, networked digital
libraries of Theses and Dissertations.
Modern
Management Education is becoming dependent on e-learning. Recognising this fact,
the institute has upgraded to a high-speed 20 MBps internet connectivity having
superior quality in terms of speed and uptime, using a wi-fi network totally
connected through optical fibres in the entire campus. The institute has also introduced
an intranet (LAN) facility using an in-house server of 500 GB which has
immensely benefitted the students and faculty as the lecture notes,
presentations, case studies, research work, etc can be kept in a share folder
which can be accessed and viewed by all concerned. The institute has installed
an ERP network for online information and communication. Students’ results and
students’ feedback on course and faculty are generated electronically through
this ERP system.
To bring thrust on Quality Management Systems in the
school, we have gone for ISO 9001:2008 certification which was awarded to us by
STQC Certification Body, Government of India. The school is in process of accreditation
from National Board of Accreditation (NBA).
With respect to the faculty, we have full time
faculty members with distinguished academic and research background from some
of the world’s best known institutions like Wharton Business School; Johns
Hopkins University; IIMs; XLRIs and IITs. Beside our full time faculty members,
we have on board more than 12 international visiting faculty and guest faculty
from all over the world from best-known institutions like University of
Nottingham; Curtin Business School, Australia; University of Central Oklahoma; Montclair
State University, Washington State University, Pullman, USA; Columbia
University; Asian Institute of Management, Manila, Philippines; University of
Cincinnati; Stanford University; University of Pittsburgh; Georgia State
University, just to name a few, who visit the campus time to time and teach
various courses.
Consultancy, Publications and Research Work is our
main thrust area. I am happy to announce that we have forged an alliance with
IIT Kharagpur to conduct joint industrial consultancy to bring forward much
desired industrial rejuvenation. Currently, we are pursuing with one of the
major Pharmaceutical company with global footprints to undertake a consultancy
assignment for improvement in their shopfloor performance. Publications and
research work conducted by our faculty have grown by more than 50% compared to
the previous year where more than 51 research publications including book
publication have already been authored and presented by our eminent faculty
members. Along with our faculty, many of our students are participating in the
research work and I am happy to inform that number of our students have received
various awards for their presentations in conferences and publications in refereed
journals, some of them are also present in today’s convocation.
Other than creating high quality managers for the
corporates and eminent researchers, we greatly recognize our responsibility to
create entrepreneurs which is call of the day. Our Chairman, Shri S K Birla has
always been enthusiastic on this subject. I am happy to inform that we have setup
‘Innovation and Entrepreneurship Incubation Centre’ with an objective to create
budding entrepreneurs from within our students and for this purpose we have
tie-up with National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN).
Recognizing the fact that our students are required
to be equipped with modern day technologies in addition to their on-going PGDM
programme, we have tied-up with SAP University Alliances, who are the global
leader in Enterprise Resource Planning (Software) and we are offering this
programme on optional basis. SAP University Alliance jointly with CBS is
providing Certificate of Completion to the students who successfully completed
the programme.
Under the category of executive education, we
partnered with SAS who is the global leader in business analytics and the
largest independent service provider in the business intelligence market in the
world having more than 65,000 sites in over 135 countries across the world. We are
already running a joint certification programme of six months duration with SAS
at Shri Shikshayatan School premises, where the classes are regularly held at
weekends with faculties drawn from CBS as well as from SAS.
Recognizing the fact that development of MSME sector
is the backbone of industrial rejuvenation, we have been conducting special
programmes for MSME sector in collaboration with Federation of Small &
Medium Industries (FOSMI), we have been given a grant by Ministry of Science
and Technology, Government of India to conduct a research project titled
“Extent of R&D and Innovation in MSME: Strategies, Determinants and
Effects”. The project is moving as per stipulated schedule.
Our placement happens in 35 diverse industry
verticals across 60 different national and multi-national companies mostly
through campus interviews. We are achieving 100% placement of our students year
after year since the inception of the school. Basic premise of our existence is
on the fact that through our residential well devised 360 degree mode of imparting
education to our students, we develop them as a productive resource and place
them with industries of repute where they perform year after year and those
industries come back to us again and again seeking placement of our students.
This gives us the confidence that we are indeed in the right framework of
imparting knowledge and education. It is also true that the swings in the market,
the society and the environment which in general affect the B-Schools, do
affect us as well but with the given resilience we are sure to march ahead and succeed.
The fifth batch of PGDM students of 2012-14 Batch who
shall be formally conferred with graduation today have already occupied special
places in leading corporates. The list of companies who employed our students
is also very impressive. It includes names like PricewaterhouseCoopers,
Standard & Poors, Berger Paints, Maerskline, ICICI Securities, Eveready,
McLeod Russel, HSBC, Future Group, IIFL, Century Ply, XL Dynamics, Franchise
India to name a few. I sincerely thank
all those organizations from the core of my heart and we look forward to having
long term mutual beneficial relationship.
Finally, few words to the students who are graduating
today:
Although you shall be formally leaving the school,
you shall stay part of the CBS family throughout your life as distinguished
alumni of CBS. I strongly urge upon you to maintain this relationship and help
us to build together and uphold the brand CBS, your alma mater as altar of
excellence. It is you who shall be the brand ambassador of your school to the
world outside. Let us together nurture CBS to a level of excellence
contributing to the nation’s growth and prosperity.
The nation today needs young corporate leaders for
giving leadership in sustainable growth. I am sure that you shall work
steadfast and fearlessly towards this pious objective with value based approach
which this institute has embedded in your thought process during your two year
stay in this campus. In your journey towards this, you shall face many
hindrances and obstacles. You shall come over all those obstacles through your
resilience upholding the culture depicted in the words of our Great Poet,
Rabindranath Tagore:
In Poet’s original words:
“বিপদে মোরে রক্ষা করো এ নহে মোর প্রার্থনা--
বিপদে আমি না যেন করি ভয়।“
In Poet’s own translation:
“Let
me not pray to be sheltered from dangers
but to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain
but for the heart to conquer it.
Let me not look for allies in life's battlefield
but to my own strength.
Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved
but hope for the patience to win my freedom.
Grant that I may not be a coward,
feeling Your mercy in my success alone;
But let me find the grasp of Your hand in my failure.”
but to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain
but for the heart to conquer it.
Let me not look for allies in life's battlefield
but to my own strength.
Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved
but hope for the patience to win my freedom.
Grant that I may not be a coward,
feeling Your mercy in my success alone;
But let me find the grasp of Your hand in my failure.”
Thank you all very much.
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