Dr. Filomina Parayil George has a long list of qualifications to her name: Masters in Business Administration, Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, UK, and a Fellow Member of Zambian Institute of Certified Accountant, Zambia. She has done her doctorate in Financial Economics from M.G. University.
Dr. Filomina has almost 2 decades association with SCMS Cochin School of Business. She first joined the institute as a faculty member and HOD of Finance. Later, she was Dean (Admissions), and now the Director.
In her endeavour to raise the standards of SCMS, she studied the job market and concluded that there is a huge expectation gap between industry expectations and employee/student deliverables. She opines that perhaps this is due to the increasing number of students becoming more complacent and taking the system for granted. SCMS bridges this gap in various ways. The first of them by making the students and faculty aware of this gap, since awareness and acceptance are the first steps to improvement. Secondly, she focuses on bringing about innovations in training and pedagogy. She claims that “The programs have been redesigned to reach the average student and make them more inclusive. Mentoring programs for the students is also given more focus with the active involvement of the mentors”. Language skills, which is essential to good communications, is also another area of focus. The first step is to identify the students who need significant help in communication – then, they undergo an extensive training program. In the endeavour to bridge the industry expectations and delivery gap, the faculty has also been assisting by ensuring that a hierarchical system does not act as a barrier and that the students work as a team. Today, the student-faculty relationship is very strong, which extends beyond the standard 9 to 5 hours and builds relationships that evolve into personal friendships.
Besides boasting of an international faculty, like Dr. Subraniam Swamy who visits twice a year, SCMS also has an international student tie-up, with students exchange programs. SCMS has accreditations and certifications with renowned bodies like AICTE, ISO 9000:2000, NBA, and ACBSP (USA). In addition being equipped with modern teaching aids, SCMS has all the facilities like library, computer centre, and provision for staying in campus. Under co-curricular activities, the Management Students’ Syndicate is an entity formed to facilitate effective interaction with the corporate world. Its functions include organizing seminars by inviting experts from the industry and arranging visits to organizations to understand their day-to-day functions. Under its aegis, students also undertake specific assignments on behalf of the industry. The faculty lends the needed support.
Most often when the students are with us, they are at the receiving end of the pressure, so cannot experience the sheer pleasure of being a part and parcel of SMCS. “It is only later in their career that they value their time with us”. I experienced this recently when I met an ex-student who is today and achiever in her own domain, exclaimed, “Ma’am, what I built is with the foundation of SCMS.’
