Sign in to follow 's advice will appear in your account when you log in. Follow specific Community Members and never miss out on their views and insights. Build a group of Members who you want to listen to.

Email: Password:

Don't have SiliconIndia account? Sign up Forgot your password? Reset

Ask Prof Sanjoy Sircar for Advice

If your advice request is relevant to other Community members, our Editorial team may choose to send this request to all Experts to attract a wider range of answers and share them with the Community. Rest Assured, we will protect your privacy (unless you recommend otherwise).

Advice Request

Submit Cancel

Prof Sanjoy Sircar

Next Member >>

Prof Sanjoy Sircar

Director - PGPM and Professor

Great Lakes Institute of Management

Prof Sanjoy Sircar is a member of:

- Expert

Education and Teaching Background

I started my Career with PricewaterhouseCoopers after completing CA. Thereafter,I went to United States to pursue higher studies. I started teaching during my doctoral studies there and developed instant liking for teaching. I worked at a couple of institutions in US. After coming back to India, I started working with SP Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai.After SPJIMR, I was the dean at NMIMS, Mumbai and from there I joined Great Lakes as the PGPM Director. I also worked with MDI, Gurgaon briefly. I have also been a visiting faculty at IIM-Indore and IIM-Lucknowand I still teach at IIM-Calcutta.

Unique in Teaching Style

Everyone has his or her own style and nobody creates something unique intentionally. Even if there was something unique, it would be quite difficult for me to particularize it. Teaching is not about having unique style.But, I do try to make my classes as interactive as possible and I try to create an atmosphere where students can learn without being afraid to ask questions. This is because the subject I teach is very technical and challenging. So I don’t expect my students to be great at it. In my perspective, a student should not go home with muddled minds; the doubts should be clarified then and there.

Teaching Style

I don’t prefer to use PPTs as a tool to teach. But Students are more comfortable with PPTs,That’s because they are not much used to reading text books. When it comes to deciding the difficulty level of the course, quality of the students play an important role. That’s simply because a teacher can push to an extent, in the end students decide, for a teacher, the amount of time it would take to complete the course.What you can possibly deliver in 10hrs to good quality students might take 13hrs,If the quality is not that good. Given that there is a constraint on the total number of hours in a course, there will always be a trade-off. So, I expect a minimum standard, below which I don’t compromise, irrespective of the quality. So, I push my students very hard mainly because of two reasons. One is the depth of coverage of the topic that might get compromised if the quality of students is not that good. Secondly when a teacher starts switching from the fundamentals to the more advanced functions, a student can only cross the threshold if s/he is able enough to handle complex problems.

Ambience that makes its favorable to students learning

When the courses are residential, it is easy for the students to learn and study. The Mughal gardens may not be a great place to learn because it’s very pretty. So, when you look at Great Lakes from the students’ perspective, the availability of the resource center, huge classrooms and syndicate rooms available at all times,ensures great academic experience. There are a plethora of B - schools in the middle of large cities of United States that are not necessarily residential. But there the culture is such that every student drives to the school in their own (or rented) vehicles. On the other hand in India, still most students use public transport. This is where Great Lakes students do earn an edge. Basically, the academic ambiance here acts as a catalyst and enhances students’ learning experience.

Future students and hiring companies

Well we have recently introduced a specialization in Business Analytics in the one year program. Also in Finance area, we have started courses on Trading Practices starting this year.

For Both Students and Recruiters, especially during MBA, it’s like a chicken and egg situation. The students want to know if good recruiters come to the campus and the recruiters want to know if good students come to the campus. So one thing leads to another, but one can never really make out what. We too have a chicken and egg problem. The good part is that the one-year program is established, though in education segment it takes a while for a brand to be build, Great Lakes has created a niche for itself amongst the students as well as Recruiters since the beginning.

As far as the students are concerned, the academic environment at Great Lakes is much better than lot of other places. Also the quality of input is definitely better at Great Lakes and that is because we are very careful about the quality of our faculty; we would rather not offer a course if the faculty is not good. Also we make sure that the match between the faculty, the student and the course is very good.