Kalpana Heliya
Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
Dr. Thomas Mathew
Director, Faculty - Operations
Director, Faculty - Operations
Ex.Director NITIE, Powai
Kalpana : When was the Institute established? Please shed some light on the history of its establishment.
Dr. Thomas Mathew: The St. Francis Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai was established in 2002 by ‘The Society of the Congregation of Franciscan Brothers’. The Congregation’s Institutes is spreaded across 65acre of land and they are running the Educational Institute last 100years. It gives education to 9000 students from Kindergarden to 12 standard. This is under the Maharashtra secondary board. Apart from this they have 25 different trade skills institutes which include electrical, automobile, printing, training in speech for various bpos, training in computer graphics and animation, training with respect to modern Vocational training and skills development.
In 1992 they started with St Francis Institute of Technology & Engineering College. After the success of engineering college they moved to Management education and St. Francis Institute of Management and Research was established in 2002.
Kalpana : What is the vision of the institute?
Dr. Thomas Mathew: There are 3 important visions behind starting Management Education.
1) To develop into a world class management institutes comparable to best institute in world by continuous improvement and to develop a managerial class of student with techno-man skills.
2) To develop entrepreneurial spirit to build up the global business of the future. This Congregation has their houses all over the world like south am, Europe Asia, Latin America etc.hence we have a global vision the people who study here develops a global business .Build innovative and creative solutions to problems emphasing on entrepreneurial attitude.
3) To build world class standards and strive for continuous improvement.
Kalpana : Three unique factors that differentiates St.Francis Institute of Management from other BSchool.
Dr. Thomas Mathew: I firmly believe that “ Theory without practice is actually sterile and practice without theory is futile”. In the sense students here must have practical knowledge as today companies need people who can be useful from day one. Hence we insist on lot of practical exposure. We do this through students summer project, Winter projects and Weekends projects. We have our in-house guides and guides in the company. During their 2months time continuous monitoring of the students performance is done in the company and in the institute. The project problem is defined in the beginning.
We Conduct presentations in the college and reward 10-12 best projects with a cash amount of 5thousand. Also apart from the summer projects we encourage students to go for weekend projects nearby companies and then we have winter project in the month of January to March. The timetable is adjusted in such a way that students who are inclined can go for winter projects. So this is the way we emphasize on practical knowledge and also the Student-Industry interaction at SFIMAR is very high. We invite people from the Industry to lecture students. On an average 50-60 people come to our campus. We use our alumni network. So practically this type of etho we practice in our Institute ie based on Practical experience. Thats one.
2) We take care of the total personality development of the student right from the day one. We have done lot of investment behind students development.
Tests are conducted by Mafoi, HR Consultant. They measure personality by conducting numerous psychometric tests of all the students and make a dossier to understand the strengths and weaknesses of students, his problems, his likes and dislikes, his interests, etc.
Mafoi consults and counsels students regarding their capabilities and interests.
Apart from this we also have two in-house consultants for counselling students.
We maintain clubs basically for Co- curriculum and extra curriculum. There are 7-8clubs for outdoor and functional areas activities like Marketing, Finance, HR, Systems and Operations.
These are the major development activities and student from other colleges also participates in this.
We have in all 8programs in a year. Every year we have one major panel discussion held called BizCzar which is conducted at Taj land ends during which we have panel discussion on Marketing, HR, Finance and Supply chain. People well known in these fields take part in the panel discussion.
Then we have ‘Path’ –the research seminar in the month of March wherein we invite faculty member of other management colleges and award best research paper. We have own publication FINMAR research journal these papers are published in this journal.
30colleges had participated in our annual Management Festival Exuberance ’09.
Apart from this we have functional seminars every year in which industry speakers. This is organised and managed by students supervised by faculty members.
3) Third is the Students academic growth. Students are continuously evaluated with short examinations, tests, assignments, presentations and cumulative marks are monitored with their final examination. We have an excellent academic session planned by our faculty members in the beginnings and the evaluation scorecards are given to the students.
Class performance is assess by the teachers and given to the in-house counsellor. So this way there’s an integrated process build to take care of the student’s performance.
Then we encourage students to participate in inter collegiate competitions and our faculty mentor them for the same.
Evaluation is done by the Industry participants. We call about 20 Industry executives to the campus to evaluate their projects.
Third are the Entrepreneurial programs. We have certain schemes to develop our students as entrepreneurs. Students are divided into 25groups and they take-up a business plan project. 6 best projects are acknowledged and awarded fabulous prizes.
Kalpana : What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a government affiliated Institute?
Dr. Thomas Mathew: Government affiliated as such advantages are very limited i.e. We have university degree and an institutional backup which is good in the beginning.
We find that we are now an established and have good placements records i.e. we have our credibility built. Advantages are not very large but definately disadvantages are many like number.
a) We don’t have autonomy in selecting students.
b)We don’t have our own syllabus and the Mumbai university is not regularly revising the syllabus. If at all we are given the autonomy to make our own syllabus then we would stress on teaching our students about the emerging areas of business management.
c) Networking is limited because of government affiliation we are limiting our scope of networking like we cannot go for a collaboration with the foreign university unless we get a permission from Mumbai university and even if they grant us the required permission it will be with certain strings. We right now have many foreign universities coming forth to have a course collaboration, teaching collaboration and different other collaboration but this will be possible only when we have an autonomy.
d) Fees charges. It’s not the Mumbai University fixing the charges but some agencies. We have students who are willing to pay more if they are given value but have to refrain ourselves to build certain qualities in the institutes because of the expenditures .
Autonomy in handling the Institute affects the quality of the institute significantly.
Kalpana : In terms of ranking, where would you place St. Francis considering other Governmental affiliated BSchools?
Dr. Thomas Mathew: among the Government affiliated colleges in Mumbai we place St.Francis Institute of Management among thetop 3 and our AIMA ranking ( All India Management Association ) is 47th FOR THE LAST year and we got A grade.
According to Dalal Street Management colleges survey we were rated among 100 best Management institutes in India.
Kalpana : What was the cut-off for admissions to MMS 2009-2011 Batch?
Dr. Thomas Mathew: Cutoff in the fourth round was 137 and for the first round was 162.
Kalpana : Number of seats reserved for the Minority quota. What criteria are evaluated for selection?
Dr. Thomas Mathew: 50% for minority. Selection is Purely based on CET and then we there is tie we evaluate their final year scores.
Kalpana : Permanent and guest faculty are the pillars of any BSchool? What would you say about the faculty at your institute?
Dr. Thomas Mathew: Including me we have 21 faculty members. They are mostly PHDs and and MPhills. We have a very good in-house, Visiting and Guest faculty. Almost all of them have an good Industry experience and we have it mandatory in our Institute.
Kalpana : Could you please shed some light on the GURUKUL concept?
Dr. Thomas Mathew: Gurukul is an integrated association of the faculty, the students and the their activities are reported directly to me. We appoint mentors in the beginning for the students like our MMS A and B Batch has its mentor and then MMS Specialization batches have their functional mentors. We have 7mentors in all and they work with 8elected students from the class who interacts with these mentors regarding their academic or any other problems and these mentors are in touch with me. So these is the entire concept of ‘Gurukul’.
We have actitvities like YOGA wherein we train students to strengthen their mental abilities and to maintain discipline in their life.
Kalpana : What would you say about your institutes infrastructure, How does it add to the total education experience to students?
Dr. Thomas Mathew: Our infrastructure is one of the best in the Mumbai universities. We have a rich resources in our Institute. We have 12thousand books in our library and we have an inter colleges network wherein our students can access to a lot of knowledge and information. We have a number of CDs in Library. We have 3thousand online journal then we have packages like Capital Online, Provost given by CMI and ISI online i.e. a capital market data package.
WE have two computer laboratory in which we have 230 computers then we have a WIFI connection i n our campus. Also apart from this we are planning to introduce a Management Academic system from a Foreign group this a computerised communication system.
We have a gymnasium , Indoor games arrangements and sport ground for students
Kalpana : The MBA Job Market is worst in a decade: How much has it impacted your institute, what are the initiatives taken to overcome it? Your institute’s Placement strategy?
Dr. Thomas Mathew: It has not really impacted our Institute except for normally we finish with our placement by February or latest by March but this year it came till June i.e. it took a bit long but we ensured that all our students were placed.
We have a Placement head from the placement officer along with the executive committee who reports me the progress and we are very particular with the placements because it adds to the Institutes reputation. Also at present the acceptability of an Institute as per the tempo of the Mumbai students is on the Placement records and everything else takes a back seat hence our focus is on placements. We monitor placements by periodical meetings, we use our Industry networks alumni networks and our faculty also takes students to companies for presentations and subsequent placements.
Kalpana : Job’s woes unlikely to end anytime soon. Your suggestions to students who have cleared this year and for the new entrants.
Dr. Thomas Mathew: They must be clear about their strengths, their interests and what do they want in life.
Sometimes Students are very impatient and they get into any job and end up in frustration, so first and foremost I suggest my students to prepare themselves for a particular place in which they are really interested and prepare for that position. Preparing is just not in the class but analyse the outside working environment too.
Once they are clear about their objective they are being able to channelize their activities towards it.
Secondly they should prove themselves useful to the company from the day one they join the company not in terms of his competence or skills alone but in terms of his behavioural patterns also.
I suggest my students to go and do a company’s project for six months and convince the company about their competency and do hard work and stretch a little more in their work.
Kalpana : Message to Aspirants and students pursuing MBA education?
Dr. Thomas Mathew: Every Institute’s director must have a distinct style of operating for their students in line with the requirement of the students. The director should form such a mould that it develops the best type of talent from the group of students that they get in the Institute and their activities should be moulded in that way.
And every director should feel satisfaction in seeing the quality of the students that he gets and I think that is the best message for the Directors of the BSchools. We don’t have control over the inputs of the students but when it comes to the final product he should be the best and that raw materials we must give them that should be the objective of every director and I think only then our education system will improve.
Kalpana : Message to directors of other B Schools in the management education perspective?
Dr. Thomas Mathew: Do the appropriate preparation. The MBA program right now is a Capping Professional Qualification what I mean by this is like if a general Graduates goes to a company the chances he gets the job are very less. So today the best capping professional degree is MBA and also the earning aspects is good for an MBA. So my advice to the MBA aspirants is that they should prepare themselves to take up a management program with conviction in which they get the necessary skills.
By Kalpana Heliya in Interview with Dr.Thomas Mathew
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