S P Jain wins international TeamMBA award

After more than 21,000 votes were cast online in May, two business schools ― SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (India) and the College of William and Mary Mason School of Business (United States)―won TeamMBA awards for their community service and social responsibility programs. The winners were announced today by the Graduate Management Admission Council at its Annual Conference, the largest gathering of graduate business school professionals in the world.

A total of 78 service programs from schools around the world were considered for the TeamMBA award. These programs involved nearly 1,500 students who volunteered almost 50,000 hours and raised US$2.6 million.

“In honoring these two great institutions, we  also recognize the tremendous spirit and passion that business school students around the world have for giving back to their community and to their commitment to improving the lives of others,” said Dave Wilson, president and CEO of GMAC. “These are challenging times for many people all over the world and to see the effort that these students are putting in to making a difference is truly remarkable. Today's MBAs and other graduate business students fiercely embrace their obligation to give back and make the world a better place.”

SP Jain won the All School Award, which recognizes a school for its commitment to promoting and supporting social engagement by its students through school-led programs, services, institutional culture and community outreach. Through more than a dozen individual, team and school-wide projects, students at SP Jain worked to improve the lives of women, milk and agricultural growers, disaster victims and rural villagers.

The College of William and Mary Mason School of Business won the All Service Award, which recognizes outstanding projects in categories such as community service, sustainability/greening and consulting, for engaging in a variety of projects, including a mustache auction to raise money to start a microlending account, two blood drives that collected 100 pints of blood, and raising tens of thousands of dollars for local and global charities.

Microsoft bags cloud order from AICTE

The governing body for technical education in India, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has adopted cloud computing to improve technical education and prepare Indian students for the workforce. Microsoft’s Live@edu service will be deployed in more than 10,000 technical colleges and institutes throughout India over the next three months.

Live@edu is a hosted communication and collaboration service that offers email, Microsoft Office Web Apps, instant messaging and storage to AICTE’s more than 7 million students and nearly 500,000 faculty members, for a total reach of 7.5 million users — roughly double the size of the Los Angeles population — making AICTE Microsoft’s largest cloud customer ever.

AICTE: Technical education in-the-cloud

“Microsoft’s cloud platform will make for a truly progressive ecosystem and contribute to the country’s technical education by providing a better communication and collaboration platform for institutes and students,” explains Dr S S Mantha, chairman of AICTE.

According to Anthony Salcito, vice president of Worldwide Education, the country is witnessing rapid economic activity and growth. Developing India’s youth and their skills is going to play an important role globally in the country’s inclusive growth. “The union budget also laid emphasis on skill development and so does the proposed 12th Five Year Plan with a National Policy on Skill development. The PPP model (public-private partnership) is most essential in running and managing training institutions that provide every opportunity to address the skill gap most efficiently,” adds Salcito.

Sums up Sanket Akerkar, managing director, Microsoft India: “Microsoft has always seen education as a priority area and believes that technology offers possibilities that can help empower not just teachers and students but collectively India as a nation.”