We Follow Cross-Cultural Teaching and Learning Method, says Dean of Sharda School of Business, Sharda University

In a conversation with Shiksha.com, Dr Jayanthi Ranjan, Dean of Sharda School of Business, Sharda University talks about 7 diverse programmes offered at Sharda School of Business. The school offers summer internships, placement assistance and skill-oriented courses for students to prepare them as per industry standards.

Dr Jayanthi Ranjan is an academician with 26+ years of experience in teaching, research, training and consulting. Currently, she is the dean of the Sharda School of Business, at Sharda University. She is known in academics for institutional brand building, international strategic academic activities, international benchmarking campus school alignments, student affairs and program innovation.

Q1. What is the difference between the teaching methodology in your institute and others?

With my nearly 30 years of teaching, research and training experience I can say that we are different and diverse. We offer experiential learning participative learning and a problem-solving environment. As a business school, we are gifted with 7 diverse programs. Hence cross-cultural teaching and learning is huge and impactful. For example, there are vocational courses, there are discipline-specific electives, there are value-added courses, there are community connect programs, there are co-curricular courses and all such diverse courses give the student and teacher a lifelong learning atmosphere. Our MBA and BBA students do internships in our hospital, and do market research to other schools thus infusing an impetus flavour. As we are gifted with 14 different and diverse schools inside our own university (like design architecture pharma, management schools stand tall since we have 28% of international students, and more than 40% are girl students. This gives us a USP of teaching and learning more meaningful.

Q2. How are you preparing your students to be Industry ready?

Besides the usual summer internship, live projects, pre-placement talks and skill-oriented courses, we ensure students are upskilled, unskilled (yes) and reskilled. This is very important. Instead of just offering soft skills we do ensure to tie up with Sharda Skills and Sharda Tech a separate domain for students to undergo their skill development training. Further, we provide them a touch of lifelong empathy informed of a two-credit course called- community connect where they visit villages and communities and understand their real needs. They submit reports and publish as an action based research. This actually gives them a ground reality. At our school, we provide career paths rather than jobs. Hence besides good placements, the students also become entrepreneurs.

Q3. What qualities do your students have that other college students lack?

Our students are always willing to take new tasks. They meet deadlines at such a random pace. Another quality is the diversity of international and national. So copious flow of ideas.

Q4. Do you think the curriculum of the courses taught in your institute fits in the requirement of the industry?

Indeed, this is as per any top business school standards. For this, we have a board of studies drawn from top industries and top business schools.