Upholding the Standards is the Way to Go for IMI-B – Dr. Garimella

As the newly launched IMI-Bhubaneswar institute starts its academic journey, Dr. Somayajulu Garimella, the director plans to lead the institute on a path of consistent growth. Dr. Garimella shared his thoughts on meeting the key challenges faced by a management institute in its nascent years.

Dr. Garimella has been the area chairman of Marketing and Chairman-MDP and Consulting Committee at IMI Delhi earlier. With his immense experience in the field of management as an award-winning academician and an industry expert both, he identified several challenges that lay ahead of him. In his view, there are several challenges associated with keeping only the best faculty, students, and administrative staff in the campus.

A noteworthy academician, Dr. Garimella earned several qualifications that reinforces his repute as one of the few management gurus in India. He completed his Ph. D in Management from the Osmania University after completing his M.B.A from the University of Texas and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the West Virginia University.

“In a highly crowded management education space, my major challenge is to attract outstanding faculty, administrative staff and students to join a new campus,” mentioned Dr. Garimella. Having said that, he also shared his plans to rely on excellent teaching fraternity IMI already is known for. “Fortunately for us at IMI-Bhubaneswar, we were able to overcome the challenge of attracting good faculty thanks largely due to the excellent reputation that IMI enjoys in the teaching fraternity and also due to availability of a large pool of well qualified management faculty in this part of the country,” He added.

Discussing about his plans to meet these challenges, Dr. Garimella intends to make sure that the IMI-B campus upholds the reputation of IMI Delhi in a long run. “To start with, we intend to follow the same pedagogy and curriculum which made the PGDM program at IMI-Delhi one of the most sought after in the country. In addition, many of my faculty colleagues from Delhi will complement the faculty members at IMI-Bhubaneswar to ensure that the standard set by Delhi campus will be replicated in Bhubaneswar campus as well,” Said Dr. Garimella.

In addition, he put emphasis on developing unique teaching methodologies by continuous practice of research and innovation. “While we strive to uphold the standards set by the Delhi campus, we will try to create unique image for the new campus by constantly innovating and introducing new courses and teaching methodologies to stay ahead of the curve,” added Dr. Garimella.

He also informed that the students of IMI-Bhubaneswar will be availing the placement opportunities along with the IMI-Delhi students. He declared that the companies visiting the IMI-Delhi campus would also be offering employment opportunities to the IMI-B students. This decision has been made in order to maximize the student satisfaction since the very first batch of the PGDM course at IIM-B.