Ensuring diversity on both academic and gender front has been a challenge for every top management schools across the nation.
The top B-schools, in recent years, have taken several initiatives to ensure that incoming batches have a good representation of female students. IIM-Rohtak is one such institute which has successfully been able to improve diversity in its flagship Post-Graduate Programme in Management.
As part of its initiatives to develop new programmes, the institute has also launched a two-year Executive Post Graduate Diploma in Sports Management.
IIM-Rohtak has seen a phenomenal rise in number of female participants in the 2018-20 batch compared to the previous batches. The number of female students has increased from just 9 in 2016 to 119 in 2018. It was 28 for 2017. The number of male participants has been 196 and 123 for 2017 and 2018 respectively. For 2016, the number of male students was 125.
Achieving this feat was not an easy task for the institute, especially because of its location in Haryana, which is considered relatively unsafe.
Eases security concerns
The institute has taken several initiatives in this regard wherein students and officials are engaged with every female applicant through multiple outreach programmes, management conclaves, and digital platforms. Moreover, IIM-Rohtak moved to its sprawling 200-acre campus in 2018 which also helped ease the security concerns among the aspirants.
IIM-Rohtak Director Professor Dheeraj Sharma said “Diversity is important for creating an environment that emboldens creativity, confidence, and candour in the future business leaders. In the diverse and exciting environment at IIM-Rohtak, we hope to produce well-rounded future business leaders.”
Sports management
IIM-Rohtak has also been working extensively on developing new programmes that would ensure that individuals from multiple domains interact with each other to facilitate knowledge assimilation.
In line with this very ideology and perceiving a need to develop excellent sports managers, IIM-Rohtak became the first premier institute in management to launch a two-year Executive Post Graduate Diploma in Sports Management.
The programme aims at producing professionals who have competence in various domains such as sports marketing, sports law, financials of sports, event management, sports infrastructure management and sponsorship among others.
The first batch of the programme saw the participation of 62 individuals, out of whom seven have represented India in multiple international sports competitions.
“Sports industry is growing exponentially in India and hence attracting commercial interests from a variety of stakeholders. In order to truly realise the value of sports industry more qualified professional are needed. In the immediate future, IIM-Rohtak is committed to producing best sports management professional in Asia,” said Prof. Sharma.
