Fellowship programmes to start shortly at Trichy IIM

After a great start in the first academic year (2011-13) by getting all but one of its 84 students internships in various domains, the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Tiruchirappalli, is now adding one more feather to its cap: Offering 10 Fellow Programmes in Management (FPM is equivalent to a PhD in a university) that carries a stipend of Rs 30,000 pm throughout the course, that is expected to run into a maximum of five years.

Of the 13 IIMs in the country, six (Ranchi, Rohtak, Raipur, Udaipur, Kashipur and Trichy) were launched in the last couple of years, and Trichy and Ranchi are the only two to offer this FPM. Nevertheless, Trichy is still special because it is the only IIM among the later entrants to have all full-time faculties, as many as 12 of them, while two more will be joining shortly. A French faculty member, Mouloud Madoun, who teaches Human Resources, is one among them, and as many as seven experts are on the visiting faculty list. "This academic strength enables us to cater to the specific, individual needs of research scholars round-the-clock," IIM Director Prafulla Agnihotri told TOI on Friday.

Talking about FPM, Agnihotri said the aspiring candidates would have to prove their innovative skills to the selection committee of the IIM in addition to going through a rigorous preliminary selection process that factors in the CAT score, profile score, WAT (Written Aptitude Test) and PI (Personal Interview). Depending upon the selection of the individual discipline, the selection panel would also include experts from outside the faculty, Agnihotri said. But, for deserving candidates with a creative bent of mind, it would come as a great opportunity. The criteria that would govern the selection process would be the usefulness of the programme to the industry and society at large, result-orientation, clarity of ideas, level of knowledge and sustained passion in a given field. The short-listed candidates would be finally required to make a presentation of their ideas and to teach students later, once selected, said Agnihotri.

The Trichy IIM campus will be bubbling with added enthusiasm once the next batch of some 80-plus students join it in the current programme this May. The first of the three phases of infrastructure development will be ready by June 2014. and a sum of Rs 300 crore will be spent on the construction of an academic block, hostel for 500 students and quarters for faculty and staff.