Process oriented, meticulous and organised, Professor Sonali Singh is known to be the perfect Quantitative Techniques and Operations teacher in Jaipuria Institute of Management. A core faculty member at Jaipuria Noida, Professor Sonali Singh is an MPhil in Operations Management and has over nine years of teaching experience.

“I am passionate about teaching. I really enjoy teaching quantitative papers like Statistics, and Operations Research, simply because they are always evolving. With the world grappling with challenges of data clutter management, waste data management and, of course, tools for Big Data tabulation and analysis, the subject is only getting more critical for management students.”

It is for this reason that Professor Sonali Singh constantly invites eminent professionals from industry for guest talks. These interactions help the students of Jaipuria Institute of Management to appreciate the relevance of quantitative and statics-driven subjects in business.

“Not many newcomers understand the importance and motive of including quantitative subjects in their course. The challenge for a teacher in such a field lies in generating interest in the student. I use a lot of real life business applications in my classes at Jaipuria Noida, and keep my students involved in numerous course exercises.”

Professor Sonali Singh believes that like every profession, teaching comes with its highs and lows.

“Personally, I have experienced many great moments in my teaching career. A good day can leave you happy and enthusiastic, and feeling on top of the world! There are days when students seem very participative, and then there are days when they seem not so connected. A teacher has to keep reinventing herself or himself to keep the class participative and interested.”

Without fail, Professor Sonali Singh dedicates a portion of each day to reading articles and global updates on the subject she’s teaching the next day in her class at Jaipuria Noida. She promptly responds to her mails, clears her desk, and prepares well in advance for forthcoming tasks. She believes her own conduct will inspire her students at Jaipuria Noida to understand how essential time management is.

“If there is one lesson that I try to impart to every batch at Jaipuria Institute of Management, Noida, it is – ‘Care about the process and not just the outcome; every visionary that the world has ever seen has done just that’.”

Professor Sonali believe that the best thing that students learn in Jaipuria Institute of Management is the ability to work with others and share their success.

If there is one word that defines Dr. Pratibha Wasan, it has to be ‘Excellence’. Dr. Wasan’s tryst with excellence began much before she moved the academia. Way back in 2003, as a greenhorn business consultant at HCL Infosystems, young Pratibha – straight out of a top notch B-school – was awarded the ‘Excellence in Performance’ award with barely two years of service under her belt. It is this spirit of delivering quality that Dr. Pratibha Wasan has been bringing everyday to her classrooms over the last nine years.

“Jaipuria Institute of Management attracts good quality students. However, even good students can loose interest if they find the learning to be boring, difficult, complex and theoretical. My industry experience helps me establish and deliver the connection between theory and practice. It has given me an insight into corporate functioning, its behaviour, value systems, culture, challenges and realities, which I now pass on to my students.”

For Dr. PratibhaWasan, the academic experience is “ongoing, delightful and self-rewarding”. As an Assistant Professor – Finance, she takes quite a few subjects, but finds teaching Financial Accounting to first year students the most rewarding.

“In first year, atleast 50% of the students are from a non-commerce background, and carry a lot of apprehension about accounting and finance. In contrast, the commerce students look overconfident in the course and show dismay at what more needs to be learnt in accounting. I enjoy leveling the playing field for both groups of students through my teaching style, pedagogy and management orientation in the course. In fact one of the students, Gaurav, of the PGDM 2010-12 batch actually said to me, ‘I thought I am a commerce graduate with sound accounting knowledge… what new things could I learn? But day one in the Jaipuria class, and I feel I know nothing so far’. This is because accounting is quite different from having a managerial perspective.”

Dr. Pratibha Wasan keeps herself updated on the latest teaching techniques by attending workshops on mentoring, financial data analysis, financial statement analysis and business research methods. Infact, in one of the workshops on Financial Statement Analysis that was conducted by the PhD Chamber of Commerce in 2011, she had gone as a participant. But at the end of the two-day workshop, she was acknowledged as a great asset for the workshop resource person, since Dr. Wasan could assist her in clearing the doubts of many other participants, many of whom were entrepreneurs who wanted to learn financial statement preparations and reading. Post the event, she was even inquired after for consulting.

“I am delighted when my students achieve new heights. In fact, just yesterday, Shweta from the PGDM 2010-12 batch came to visit me and shared that when she joined Edelweiss, she was happy to find that all the derivative trading strategies she was asked to deal with had been thoroughly discussed and demonstrated in class. It put her in a commanding position from the first day of her corporate career. It is not the gratitude, but the achievements of my students, that makes my day.”

Dr. Wasan describes her teaching experience with Jaipuria Institute of Management as “enriching and great!” She finds her students aware and anxious to learn, coming from good academic backgrounds and excellent set of minds to groom as managers. Dr. Pratibha Wasan feels that faculty development programmes conducted by Jaipuria Institute of Management have enabled her to use interactive, practical, interesting and relevant course content and pedagogical tools.