It happens only in SPJIMR: Divya Gubba

Divya Gubba

Only a S P Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR) student knows the struggle of finding his/her mentee's home in the slums of Dharavi. Only a SPJIMR student knows the trouble of working for sports committee even though he/she has never played any sport in life. Only a SPJIMR student knows the pain of doing market research for a small NGO in Uttarkashi when friends in other colleges are doing the same for world famous FMCG companies in their summer internship. But all these are unique strengths of the college and the main reasons why SPJIMR is worth choosing over many IIMs. All these are a part of Non-Classroom Learnings which includes three main programs: Abhyudaya, ADMAP, and DOCC.

Abhyudaya is a 1.5-credit program in which each student is assigned a mentee (sitara). We have to go to our sitara's house every alternate Sunday throughout the first year and spend 2 hours with him/her and family. This sounds like tuition classes but it is not. In this program, the student can decide which skills he/she wants to impart and improve in his/her sitara and the medium of doing that. For example to improve a sitara’s English, the student can choose to show him/her a Hollywood movie on each visit. By the end of the year, practical exposure of slums and the struggles faced by the people there teaches the students more than what they teach their sitaras.

The second program ADMAP, stands for Assessment and Development of Managerial and Administrative Potential. It is a 3-credit course in which students are assigned committees. These committees are cultural, sports, placements to name a few. In this program, the allocation is random and the students cannot change their committee. The logic behind this random allocation is that not everything happens according to our choice and we must be ready to accept whatever we get and give it our best. To make it even more difficult, the college does not grant any power to the students but still, the students are expected to get the work done. The performance of each committee and each individual is reviewed quarterly.

The third major program is Development Of Corporate Citizenship or DOCC. In this program, each student is assigned a project with an NGO and he/she has to work closely with that NGO for 5 weeks. Most of the NGOs are situated in remote areas and are difficult to reach. The main emphasis of this program is to expose the students to the struggles of people in rural areas and develop business insights to improve their lives. So, by exposing students to all these hardships, SPJIMR ensures that they become refined and responsible individuals by the time they complete the course and join the corporate world.

About the Author:

I am Divya Gubba and I am currently pursuing PGDM in Information Management from SPJIMR, Mumbai. After spending 25 years in Hyderabad I finally got a chance to get out of the city and explore new places which include Mumbai, Pittsburgh, New York and Noida. I am an enthusiastic learner and always ready to take up challenging tasks to learn something new.