Message from Vice Chancellor
The pace of events keeps speeding up. Yet another batch is ready for its annual Convocation to be held at the end of March 2012. The economic turmoil and its reflection in the growing difficulty faced by higher education institutions, especially Business Schools, to offer their students credible placements, has been a matter of much concern. NMIMS has been continuously striving to differentiate itself from the rest in terms of the emphasis on content, pedagogy, faculty excellence, research, innovation centres as also sensitivity to the needs of the society and community. The beginning of this quarter, traditionally the Placement Season, witnessed a vindication of our efforts. Students of the Business School received better placement offers, profiles as also packages -the 3 Ps of placements. With increasing Pre-placement offers and lateral as well as executive placements, the industry has given us a resounding Thumbs up.
Our other Schools have also been participating in this pursuit of excellence. Some notable achievements in this quarter have been the award of the Bloomberg UTV B-School Excellency to our Shobhaben Pratapbhai Patel School of Pharmacy and Technology Management for excellent Industry interface and the Research efforts initiated at NMIMS under our new Dean Research, MIT alumnus, Dr. G.K. Kalyanaram.
It seems like just yesterday when, around the same time, Japan witnessed death and destruction of an unimaginable magnitude due to the earthquake and the tsunami. In part, it is a testimony of the human fortitude and grit that has helped Japan reconstruct its cities in such a short span of 11 months. Importantly however, natural disasters as this, as also those closer home in Bhuj, bring to the fore the important role that sustainable development play in preventing such tragedies. The growth conundrum has resulted in the proliferation of unplanned cities, expanding at breakneck pace along with the attendant problems posed by a growing population. Sustainable growth has today once again occupied centre-stage in all developmental planning. Planning cities and development around them would be the new challenges facing urban India. Architecture is the theme of this March edition of e-Spandan which is devoted to NMIMS’ Balwant Sheth School of Architecture.
A young School, with its inception only as recent as 2007, BSSA under its Dean Prof. T.M. Chhaya, uses contemporary design and Advanced Technology Studio models to understand the changing ethos of architectural design and practice. The faculty team of Shruti Barve and Aparna Parate have collated articles from the students of BSSA to contribute to this BSSA Special.
I hope you enjoy reading this edition of the e-Spandan.
Best regards,
Dr. Rajan Saxena