The tenth edition of the five-week specialized course for career development of various management faculties called ‘Faculty Development Programme’ (FDP) inaugurated at IIM Indore on April 16, 2018. FDP aims at professional development of management teachers, researchers, and practitioners. The inauguration took place in the presence of Chief Guest Professor L. Prasad, IIM Bangalore, along with Professor Rishikesha T. Krishnan, Director, IIM Indore and Professor Subin Sudhir, Coordinator, FDP 2018. Total 52 participants registered for the programme.
The event commenced with the lamp lighting ceremony by the Chief Guest. Professor Sudhir then gave the welcome address.
Professor Krishnan also addressed the gathering. He welcomed the participants to the Institute and noted that FDP is an effort to share the expertise gained over years with wider audience. ‘We have a wide variety of faculty members and learning from them is like an important investment on yourselves, which would help in enhancing skills and achieving a better position in career’, he said. He said that this year programme has been changed according to the needs and focuses on developing research skills and enhancing teaching effectiveness, along with how to develop as a scholar.
This was followed by the keynote address by Professor Prasad.
He spoke on the topic—‘The Metamorphosis from Teacher and/or Researcher to a Scholar’. He began his talk discussing how we all have the desire to achieve more and more and we all have the aspiration to be a complete person and we feel incomplete as of now. ‘If I want to go fast, I may go alone. But if I want to go far, I will have to go together. And that’s how I need to learn how a team works’, he explained sharing the proverb. He noted that to be effective, we must understand ourselves and others. Individually and collectively what do we and our students represent describes the idea of the nation. ‘We represent the management talent of India, we need to be the catalyst of that idea and need to make sure that India reaches heights and strengthens itself. We need to create millions of job and convince people that we have the best managerial talent’, he said.
Professor Prasad while sharing how during the sixties and seventies was the golden period of the public sector behemoths, also explained how times have changed and it is influenced by political vampirism. ‘It’s our role to enhance the equity of Brand India and we have to bridge an inequity, the chasm between the two Indias’, he said. He encouraged the participants to do a research that would cause the change, and be the catalyst who prepares students to lead the word.
‘We need to have a just society where we have education for poor and healthcare as well, and we obviate child labor and bondage child labor. We build a world where we can enhance effectiveness of education and healthcare delivery to poor and prevent exploitation of vulnerable segments of the society—this way, we will think as scholars and that’s what makes us different than researchers’, he concluded.
The session concluded with a vote of thanks by Professor Sudhir.