Edu-leaders

The Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ranchi, will soon launch a weekend executive management programme starting September 2011 for professionals with five or more years of work experience in the government, private or public sector.

IIM Ranchi Director MJ Xavier said classes for the 18-month programme titled ‘PGPEX’ (Post Graduate Programme for Executives) would be conducted on alternate weekends and fifty per cent of the core subjects will be taught by the full-time faculty members of the institute. The batch size for the PGPEX programme is slated to be 40 at the initial phase.

The new programme is being launched considering the interest shown by corporate houses to get their executives trained in various management principles. “IIM Ranchi is expecting a good response from companies like Heavy Engineering Corporation, SAIL, Arcelor Mittal, Essar Power, Usha Martin and many other companies located in Jharkhand are willing to sponsor candidates for the programme,” said a senior officer of the institute.

Presently, IIM Ranchi has only two full-time faculty members and six more faculty members are likely to join this month.  Academic requirement of the institute for teaching the students is being fulfilled from teachers from the mentor institutes, IIM Calcutta.

Acknowledging severe shortage of faculty to teach the PGPEX course in addition to the institute’s 112 PGP students (68 of the first year and 44 of the second year), Xavier said, “The new course for executives would not be a problem in any way if the same set of core faculty conduct the PGPEX classes along with their regular classes.”

It may be noted that the Human Resource Development ministry had ruled earlier this year that faculty members at all the seven new IIMs were required to teach for at least 160 hours in a year.

Evincing the company’s interest in sponsoring their officials to undergo training at IIM-R General Manager of Mecon, M Tirkey said, “The PGPEX program is meant to enhance the aptitude of participants and familiarize them to better understanding about the subject. Right now, we are sending out employees to BIT (Mesra) and XLRI, Jamshedpur, for management training.”