MICA Is A Community That Gives Wings To Individual Dreams Through Management Education

MICA, The School of Ideas, is home to some of the country's brightest minds, both teachers and students. Faculty members are the backbone of any school, and it is their knowledge and experience that empowers students and transforms them into responsible and compassionate leaders of the future.

Prof. Santosh Kumar Patra has 16 years of teaching, research, and academic management experience. He has held numerous roles at MICA, Ahmedabad, and IMT-Ghaziabad, as well as visiting faculty positions at the Indian Institute of Management, Indore (IIM-I), and other business schools. Through research, teaching, and other engagements, he strives to comprehend and explore the dynamics involved in the domains of media and entertainment business, media and digital sociology, and new media philosophy. He believes that students and evolving needs of the industry from the future professionals keep him connected with the education sector. The sector also gives the high of being a creator, be it a piece of knowledge or a mentoring a mind to align with a particular purpose. To him, this is like creating a work of art.

On his philosophy on leadership, he says, "Making of a tribe to believe in their individual life goals and connect that energy to a common goal. Trust with honesty and empathy on people I work with, and service is core of everything I do". As a professor at MICA, he strategizes about the key programs and plans for the marketing and administration of the school by creating a purpose and converting the purpose to a community.

According to Prof. Patra, MICA can unleash the individual potential to craft 'their meaning of success’ with an appropriate toolkit. With the institute following a future-backward strategy, its curriculum brings knowledge and practice together by adopting a method of co-crafting, co-testing, and co-executing the modules with sector-specific industry leaders.

On ways to make MICA more inclusive, his take is that we would require different social, economic, socioeconomic, and regional exclusivity approaches. For example, while we recognize that MICA is known as an elite & primarily urban school, one way could be to communicate how a person's socioeconomic status is no barrier to being a part of this education system. And we do this by doubling our scholarships.

On his roles and responsibilities to the Institute and the students, he believes that it is to create a thriving tribe of learners and doers by connecting academia-students-industry-community.

Prof.Patra believes that MICA's top priority over the next 10 years should be to make the purpose and process transparent and efficient for times to come. MICA exists because of learners' community value. It is essential to bring the student's interest and purpose to the core of everything that is done at MICA. Ensuring that every learner is valued by the people while MICA continues with the core and keeps building the niche with a clear purpose of expansion. It is also vital to connect knowledge creation with industry value creation, which is the way forward. MICA's strengths lie in its trust & empathy towards all external & internal stakeholders.

After being a part of the MICAn family for so long, he describes his MICAn journey, "In the beginning, the vision was particular to my core areas of functioning, i.e., Media and Entertainment Management. With time it has evolved from my core to institutional core. In the last ten years, we have successfully implemented the vision of making it the place for MEM, and now it should be the place of educational excellence. We are not only a management or marketing school. We are a community that gives wings to individual dreams through management education."

Prof Patra's take on the biggest challenges for higher education in India is that it has expanded in quantity and failed in quality. This applies to all B-Schools. Business, business principles, and ecosystem have changed but not B-schools. They need to be equipped enough to live with the change in the context of India. His plans for the MICA international affairs and/or students include making MICA the role model and place of educational excellence for the neighboring countries and not running behind the American and European education models. MICA has the potential to expand its base to South Asia and other countries and become a regional education Centre of excellence.

His philosophy to establish a healthy relation and environment in the Institute is simple- Transparency, Trust, and Transcendence. Prof Patra, on being asked to advise the current youth and the aspiring students, states, "Nothing, they are way smarter than me."

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