It greatly helps in faculty growth if a professor teaches on a foreign campus for at least a term. B.V. Krishnamurthy of Alliance Business Academy in Bangalore is one of the country’s few faculty members who received an opportunity to teach a term abroad. A reputed professor of strategy, he taught in Rotterdam Business School in the Netherlands, Swiss Business School in Switzerland and University of Michigan School of Management as part of faculty exchange programmes that his institute had with these schools.
Krishnamurthy says, “The exchange programmes greatly helped in my growth. As students in reputed B-schools abroad have good work experience, the level of classroom discussions is very high. I probably gained as much from the students as they would have gained from my teaching. Besides gaining better insight into their psyche, I got to know about their business practices and this helps in my teaching at Alliance.”
Faculty can also get international exposure through fellowships. However, there are very few fellowships such as the Fulbright or the Commonwealth fellowships which can facilitate learning from foreign institutes and cultures.
Asha Bhandarker, the Raman Munjal chair professor for leadership studies at Management Development Institute in Gurgaon, spent a term each at the London Business School and the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, as part of the fellowship programme.
Bhandarkar says, “The fellowships greatly helped in my understanding of people from different cultures and geographies, but since the selection is only one or two out of about 1,000 applicants, the best way to ensure global exposure to a large number of faculty is through exchange programmes.”
However, it’s a challenge for our faculty to be accepted internationally. Maybe they need to focus much more on research and publications.
Premchand Palety is director of Centre for Forecasting and Research (C-fore) in New Delhi, from where he keeps a close eye on India’s business schools.
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