Dear Students,
Greetings from SOIL Institute of Management!
I often wonder as to what is the purpose of education. How should a good education system look like? Should it just equip you to earn a living and make a great career? Or should it aim at developing you holistically to make you a great human being and help you discover your true purpose so that you can lead a meaningful life in all respects? Should it just create professionals or work to build “inspired leaders” i.e. those who can lead themselves and others around them with confidence, well thought through decisions and strong value system? Those who are not focussed purely on the well being of self but also care to contribute to well being of community, nation and planet.
It is easy to flow with the tide and do what everyone else is doing but in order to challenge norms, ask the right questions and to do what really needs to be done, takes courage. It is with this thought process that SOIL was conceived.
A robust education system should not only focus on quality of education delivered but on all the other aspects which will help to put this education to good use. It should aim at creating an enabling environment which ignites the passion in students to learn, through an innovative curriculum and impactful faculty. The curriculum should focus not just on “knowing” or “doing”, but a lot more on “being”. While embracing global norms, it should also have Indian ethos and spirituality as its foundation. The faculty should not just be subject matter experts, but those who are role models and inspire students to follow strong values. Learning outside the classroom through leadership events, clubs, competitions, rituals, celebrations, etc. should be given equal importance as that inside the same. The evaluation system should not “test” students, it should rather be a learning and developmental tool. The pedagogy should encourage students to ask the right questions instead of giving answers alone, trigger their interest in learning and enable them to “learn how to learn”. It should respect multiple intelligence rather than only one form of it as IQ. There is a need for the B-school and its faculty/ staff to be in constant touch with emerging trends and requirements of industry & global landscape, have the right partnerships, and quickly redesign its curriculum to respond to these needs so that students are future ready and relevant in their employability skills.
In addition to above, and may be more important in many ways, an evolved education system should also be able to create a platform where students are free to experiment, make mistakes, learn from those and then make more mistakes…new ones hopefully! It should give them enough opportunities to take on leadership roles, explore their potential and appreciate their own strengths. Each individual is special and gifted. What is needed is the guidance and freedom for them to discover these strengths and leverage them. This unleashes immense confidence in students, which helps them to accomplish and achieve milestones which they themselves may never have earlier dreamt of! The resulting transformation is a combination of this new found confidence that they know or can quickly learn what is required for them to know in future so as to succeed in the world, and lead teams, projects effectively. This is what turns “ordinary” into “extraordinary”. The results of this approach in SOIL have at times, astonished me as well. And no wonder this model has brought multiple accolades and honours to SOIL and from highly reputed forums, for being the top most innovative education model!
It is highly stimulating to be a part of this “movement” called SOIL with such a profound philosophy as created by its founder, Mr. Anil Sachdev, and an illustrious board. The powerful learning design, ecosystem and well meaning illustrious set of stakeholders have enabled to transform this philosophy into reality! We are grateful to all of them including, faculty, alumni, staff, board of directors, recruiting companies, consortium companies, senior leaders who visit us for leadership series and give time as mentors, global partners, NGO partners, and many others.
It is a highly satisfying, personally for me to see this transformation, year after year, in students who graduate and to see alumni excelling in various fields of work, experimenting and adapting to niche roles/industries, and being successful entrepreneurs in business and social domains.
After all, adding value to as many lives as possible, and making a difference, is what being an educator is all about!
Dr. Neetika Batra holds a Ph.D. and Master’s in finance from Delhi University, and is a graduate from SRCC. She started her career in the year 1990 in Investment banking with SBI Capital Markets Ltd. She was initially heading an equity scheme of SBI Mutual Fund. Thereafter, she was heading a team of Corporate Finance professionals, as Vice President for several years, handling activities like issue management, funds syndication, project advisory services. She co-founded her own boutique investment banking company in the year 2005, which later got merged with another investment bank. Simultaneously, she started getting involved in teaching and consulting assignments. She has been in the academic world since 2005 and was a freelance consultant, visiting faculty to many prestigious B-schools, teaching a variety of core and specialization subjects in Finance. Simultaneously, she was into designing and conducting various MDPs and corporate training programs. She joined SOIL in the year 2011.
Apart from journal publications, she has also written a textbook on “Investment Planning”. Her Ph.D. and research work are mainly in the area of Priority Sector Lending by Banks in India.
