IMT: Pro­mot­ing Innov­a­tion for Facil­it­at­ing Learners’ Suc­cess

IMT Ghaziabad, under Dr. Atish Chat­to­pad­hyay, fuses 45-year leg­acy with digital, inter­na­tional, industry-driven innov­a­tion for suc­cess of its stu­dents.

Gif­ted with an innov­at­ive, stra­tegic, and keen sense of nuanced under­stand­ing for build­ing respons­ible human cap­ital through edu­ca­tion, Dr Atish Chat­to­pad­hyay, Dir­ector of the Insti­tute of Man­age­ment Tech­no­logy (IMT) Ghaziabad, is a cel­eb­rated name in the industry. From a fam­ily of edu­cat­ors and aca­dem­i­cians, he car­ries for­ward the tra­di­tion with pas­sion­ate zeal, blend­ing a bal­ance between human val­ues and mod­ern edu­ca­tion and tech­no­logy, without being over­whelmed by its indis­pens­ab­il­ity. Pion­eer of ‘Shop­per Mar­ket­ing’ and recip­i­ent of sev­eral pres­ti­gi­ous recog­ni­tions, includ­ing fea­tur­ing in AACSB’S ‘Innov­a­tions That Inspire’, global list, Dr Chat­to­pad­hyay, has designed a blue­print for the leg­acy insti­tu­tion, estab­lished in 1980, for its next era of growth. Going all out global is IMT’S next des­tin­a­tion.

You have covered a broad spec­trum of insti­tu­tions in your jour­ney as an edu­cator. What led to this second stint at IMT?

I have been for­tu­nate to share a great per­sonal rap­port with each of the insti­tu­tions I have worked with, namely IBS, SPJIMR in Mum­bai, MICA in Ahmedabad, and JAGSOM in Bengaluru. I feel priv­ileged they under­stand and respect my desire for an unfettered and seam­less explor­a­tion, exper­i­ment­a­tion, innov­a­tion and con­tri­bu­tion in the field of aca­dem­ics. So, there is no full stop, but a con­tinuum to what I do. My long­time friend, San­jay Padode, Pres­id­ent of Vijayb­hoomi Uni­versity in Kar­jat, near Mum­bai, was embark­ing on the AACSB jour­ney and sought my guid­ance. The excit­ing oppor­tun­ity to build an insti­tu­tion from scratch and cre­ate innov­at­ive cur­ricula that gave learners the power of choice was the lure that led me to accept the offer. Even today, I remain on their board. To sum­mar­ise briefly, I moved to his setup, and after achiev­ing all that was expec­ted of me, I had the option to return to IMT. I did just that, and the board was glad to have me back in IMT.

How has edu­ca­tion evolved in recent times?

We still need to break the rigid and jaded mind­set that labels only those with high scores in sub­jects like sci­ence and maths as bench­marks of intel­li­gence. Cre­at­ing a cur­riculum based on Howard Gard­ner’s mul­tiple intel­li­gences model, con­sist­ing of eight intel­li­gences of lin­guistic, logical-math­em­at­ical, spa­tial, musical, bod­ily-kin­aes­thetic, inter­per­sonal, intraper­sonal, and nat­ur­al­istic, addresses the choice of sub­ject by the learner. A dis­ruptor in the true sense. Gard­ner believed that every indi­vidual has dif­fer­ent strengths and learn­ing styles across these intel­li­gence cat­egor­ies. We cre­ated schools for vari­ous courses, allow­ing stu­dents to fol­low their hearts and minds. This was a unique foray pion­eered by us in 2019, even before the New Edu­ca­tion Policy (NEP) was intro­duced in 2020 at Vijayb­hoomi Uni­versity. It was our priv­ilege to have amidst us the archi­tect of the NEP, late Dr K. Kas­turi­r­an­gan, who acknow­ledged, “This is what we envis­aged when we wrote the NEP.” Today, cross­dis­cip­lin­ary learn­ing is a real­ity.

What is the for­ward path­way that you are carving for IMT?

IMT is backed by a strong leg­acy of 45 years, excel­lent fac­ulty, vis­it­ing fac­ulty from abroad, a robust alumni net­work, and strong industry and com­munity con­nec­tions. I take pride in say­ing that many of our gradu­ates are now suc­cess­ful entre­pren­eurs. Most import­antly, IMT has a very vibrant stu­dent body, the best which I know of. Today, we stand at a cusp where the insti­tu­tion has evolved, and in future, it must be viewed as a com­bin­a­tion of a leg­acy insti­tu­tion and innov­a­tion of the future. In other words, its tra­di­tion meet­ing mod­ern­ity because fusion with the future is what IMT, Ghaziabad, stands for. Also, we have set four pri­or­it­ies:

• Strengthen industry integ­ra­tion and cre­ate cur­ricula aligned to the industry

• Digital trans­form­a­tion

• Inter­na­tion­al­iz­a­tion

• Lever­age alumni net­work, both in India and abroad

What have been your endeav­ours in global expan­sion?

IMT already runs a Dual Coun­try pro­gram (PGDM DCP), but it is now explor­ing oppor­tun­it­ies to enhance the career pro­spects of its gradu­ates in Dubai and European coun­tries. We are also eager to estab­lish mean­ing­ful inter­na­tional part­ner­ships. Recently, we signed an MOU with Avi­an­city, which is a very spe­cial­ised insti­tu­tion for AI based out of Paris. We will soon part­ner with three other European part­ners in Bar­celona, Spain, as well as in Ger­many and France. Over the next five years, the tar­get is to secure 200+ inter­na­tional place­ments, com­pared to 30 achieved last year.

Cur­rently, only for­eign fac­ulty mentor stu­dents for inter­na­tional dual courses. In future, we aim to attract a large num­ber of for­eign stu­dents, thereby mak­ing India a major global edu­ca­tion des­tin­a­tion as well.

IMT has an extens­ive alumni net­work. How are you lever­aging this strength to your advant­age? Know­ledge today has become per­ish­able, and one needs to keep pace by con­tinu­ously acquir­ing new skills – learn­ing to learn assumes greater sig­ni­fic­ance. IMT aims to be part of an empowered eco­sys­tem, not just a stan­dalone insti­tu­tion. We have a ded­ic­ated alumni asso­ci­ation, which is registered. I envi­sion them play­ing a pivotal role in ment­or­ing, sup­port­ing stu­dents, and fos­ter­ing and giv­ing shape to the sym­bi­otic eco­sys­tem that we are try­ing to cre­ate.

To make this jour­ney less intim­id­at­ing for the stu­dents, they must be ment­ored by those who have gone through a sim­ilar jour­ney in the same insti­tu­tion. The role of alumni assumes sig­ni­fic­ance at this junc­ture. On our part, we have cre­ated an empower­ing pro­fes­sional jour­ney for the stu­dents, which we will fur­ther con­sol­id­ate.

How do you assess stu­dents’ com­pet­en­cies to help them make informed sub­ject choices?

We have an intense assess­ment centre that eval­u­ates stu­dents in their very first year, provid­ing a clear pic­ture of their strengths, areas for improve­ment, and the chal­len­ging ones that require extra effort. But we first work on their strengths, as that will guide them to make career choices with sat­is­fac­tion rather than be caught in a rat race of mon­et­ary met­rics. No two indi­vidu­als are the same. Each indi­vidual has a unique ori­ent­a­tion, mak­ing dif­fer­ent choices; there­fore, they should be allowed to choose what they want to learn, when to learn it, and how they want to learn it.

Com­pet­en­cies such as com­mu­nic­a­tion, team­work, inter­per­sonal effect­ive­ness, cre­ativ­ity, innov­a­tion, cus­tomer focus, adapt­ab­il­ity to change, lead­er­ship, and ana­lyt­ical skills are typ­ic­ally eval­u­ated by the industry when mak­ing selec­tions, depend­ing on the stu­dent’s strengths. The role of insti­tu­tions and fac­ulty should be that of facil­it­at­ors.

What are the gen­er­a­tional changes that you see in today’s stu­dents?

The present gen­er­a­tion is far more con­fid­ent. They exactly know what they want and how to get it. A laud­able trait is that they know how to sift through the cor­rect inform­a­tion from the vast amount of inform­a­tion float­ing around on vari­ous digital plat­forms and apply it with focus. Today, our role has shif­ted from instruc­tion to instilling the belief that whatever they pur­sue, they are cap­able of achiev­ing it. From my exper­i­ence, I can say that they are always very recept­ive, and in turn, I get to learn from them because they open up a whole new per­spect­ive to a situ­ation. I must say par­ents need to be more sup­port­ive.

How do you look at IMT’S endur­ing and stra­tegic role in qual­ity edu­ca­tion?

Among our innov­at­ive approaches is the con­tinu­ous review and upgrad­a­tion of cur­ricula, serving as a mul­ti­plier of learners’ poten­tial, so that aspir­a­tions meet the pos­sib­il­it­ies that exist. IMT Ghaziabad should be an enabling eco­sys­tem where learners, fac­ulty, industry and recruit­ing part­ners, NGOS, inter­na­tional part­ners, alumni, and other stake­hold­ers col­lab­or­ate to enhance and co-cre­ate the value for the over­all eco­sys­tem – bene­fit­ing each stake­holder and pro­mot­ing col­lect­ive growth. As an edu­ca­tional insti­tu­tion, IMT should be able to facil­it­ate that eco­sys­tem. I look at it that way.