Mr. Somsubhra Pal is a senior faculty member at the Institute of Business Management and Research. He completed B.Com in 1997 from South City Day College, M.Com from Annamalai University, and MBA from IBMR in 2002. Post his MBA from IBMR, he joined Kasturi Lal Har Lal Limited and worked for one year. Afterward, he worked in various CA firms for 2 yrs. Later, he joined IBMR in 2004. In total, he has 23 years of corporate and educational experience. He was a topper in the NPTEL course, conducted by IITs in 2022.

IBMR Kolkata

Being a Faculty of the Management Department, what are your roles and responsibilities towards the students?

Basically, ours is a management college or a B school. So, when the students are coming to our college, my priorities are that they learn important topics of management principles, and get a good curriculum, environment, and practical exposure. We focus more on practical approaches during the course of study, and responsibility increases multi-fold due to the rigorous schedule that Management demands.

How do you tend to establish healthy relations with the students and your fellow faculty?

Throughout my life, I had a good relationship with my peers and students. Hence, that habit is always there. The factor is to inculcate that habit in our students, and we try our best to do that.

Basically, we introduce mentorship programs for the students, where there is a small group of students and each group is assigned a mentor. So automatically, there is healthy relationship building in the process, and all our co-workers are cooperative, supportive, and maintain a good relationship with the students.

How do you try to bring in a practical approach toward subjects and make them industry-oriented?

Employability is the buzzword. Basically, what we teach, should be industry related and oriented. Hence, from the very first year, we send our students to various companies for summer internships & live projects. It is not that we are sending the student only in West Bengal, we send them on a PAN India basis. Our students get a hefty stipend for doing the job and we also introduce them to various government online programs like Swayam, where they can receive teachings from IIM and IIT professors. Students are spending a lot of money and if we don’t provide them employment opportunities or good placements, then we are not doing justice to them.

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What are the best practices offered by the department to the students which help them gain necessary skills?

First, they need to have good communication skills from day one. We emphasize on presentation skills. So, from the very first day, students are asked to give PPT presentations in front of their fellow students and the teachers. We also send the students for internships. We have ensured that our students access various online courses like “MOOC” and “Swamp” platforms introduced by the central government. So automatically their skills are enriched and enhanced. We also introduce them to the stock market and other portals like Streak or moneycontrol.com, where we can show them how the stock trading is going on live.

How do you strategize the curriculum and how often it gets updated in order to make it benefiting for the students?

We are under All India Council for Technical Education and it comes under MAKAUT. So, we follow the pedagogy of the university. In every two to three years, the university updates the syllabus and it is at par with the industry. We also update our curriculum accordingly.

Do you have any extra activities or programs to enhance the skills of the students or expose them to real world challenges?

I already said we focus on internships, because skill is also very important apart from education. We teach them the terminology and the definition as to what is going on in business world, but they should have hands on experience first. Here, we send them to various corporates where they work under various senior management people, so they can have hands on experience. Also, like I have mentioned earlier, students are exposed to open online courses from where they can learn from expert teachers on Pan India basis.

What are the challenges you faced or are facing to uplift the quality of education in your department?

I am quite satisfied with my students and my fellow workers. However, we should have that continuous effort to make students more industry ready and updated. I believe that there is no shortcut, and you have to put your 100% to get the results. That mindset should be imbibed in the students.

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What do you see your colleges greatest strengths and how can they be enhanced?

See, ours is an age-old college, established in 1976. So, at that time there were practically no big schools in West Bengal. We are charging very nominal fees, which I believe is very affordable to the aspiring students. Because we focus on quality education and ours is a philanthropic institute, we charge low fees. Having said that, we have expert visiting faculty from the industry, regular industry talks, and internships. We also have a network and connection with more than 100 HRs on Pan India basis.

What valuable advice would you like to give to the students for them to have a prosperous career ahead?

I would like to advise them be a leader, don’t be a follower because you can see there are many laggards in the field. Laggards will have sluggish approach, but you should give your more than 100% to achieve your goal. There is only one friend in your corporate world and that is you.