Prof. Prakash Sethi forwarded your letter to me. I wonder if you would be interested in doing a Ph.D. at University of Texas at Dallas. If yes, please send me your details.
Sincerely,
R. Chandrasekaran
Professor, University of Texas at Dallas
The above was the text of a letter that Dipak C. Jain, recently appointed dean of the Kellogg School of Management, received in 1982 while he was doing his Ph.D. in operations research in Assam, India. He had never applied to any American university. It was his habit to write to academics in the United States who were involved in operations research and ask them for their research papers. Only this time, his letter was forwarded and had piqued the interest of Prof. Chandrasekaran.
Jain had a stellar academic record: He was a gold medallist in both his bachelor’s and master’s programs. But he had never thought of leaving India. As he worked on his thesis it became painfully obvious to him that the unstable political climate of Assam would hamper the completion of his degree. He came to the United States in 1983, switching gears from operations research to marketing. It was a pivotal shift. On completing his thesis, he was accepted as an instructor at Kellogg, which was known for its marketing expertise. On Jan. 5, 1987, Jain taught his first class. Fourteen years later he has the responsibility of navigating the course of one of the premier business schools in the world.
“That letter changed my entire career,” Jain says, in a trans-Pacific 6:00 a.m. phone interview from his hotel room in Bangkok. He had been up the whole night talking to people in America, and surprisingly there is no fatigue in his voice. On the road since October, Jain has been crisscrossing the country and the planet from New Jersey to India, Seattle to Paris, to build what he calls “relational equity” with the school’s roughly 50,000 alumni. True to his marketing background, he is consolidating the Kellogg brand. This road trip is his way of evangelizing his product to alumni, recruiters and the corporate world.
It’s remarkable that, in a field so closely tied to the corporate world, an academic would be chosen to fill the spot left vacant by Donald Jacobs, Kellogg’s dean for the past 26 years. In fact, in a shortlist of 10 candidates selected from 120 nominations for the coveted position, Jain was the only academic.
"To me teaching is not a profession, it is something I worship," he says.
It is indeed with the same sense of idealism that he wears his administrative mantle. In his eyes management education is a holistic process that shapes not only the intellect, but character as well. It is the second that drives Jain. He is in the business of building future business leaders who will have both the technical and business acumen to run a global corporation and the humanity to deal with people and understand their concerns. He strongly believes that it is now time for business schools to add a new focus to their curriculum: courses that will impart people skills to those seeking management education.
In a sign of the times, graduates from India’s IIT and other Indian schools now fill the halls of Kellogg. The Silicon Valley Indian phenomenon, coupled with the power of corporate America, is drawing Indian students away from their traditional technical or medical fields, encouraging them to venture into unexplored avenues.
“Technical education is what we are good at,” Jain says of Indian students. “Once you work in the United States, you become more inquisitive about other educational experiences. It’s nature plus nurture.”
To make the transition from the school to the business world, it is crucial that the curricula of business schools be relevant in the corporate world. Jain believes that executive education is key to this process. Executives face problems in the day-to-day running of their businesses. As such, when they raise issues in the classroom, the faculty gains knowledge of their concerns. They in turn, throw these questions to M.B.A and Ph.D. students, who confront them and try to come up with solutions. As a result, the students gain practical experience instead of dealing purely with esoteric, analytical conundrums. In maintaining this relevancy, Jain has a critical role to play. He strives to maintain a good relationship with corporate figures so that they can come and speak at Kellogg events, making faculty and students keenly aware of how business is gradually evolving.
Building that relationship is the reason for Jain’s feverish pace of movement. It’s clear to him more than anyone else that the former dean, who single-handedly raised the school from oblivion and placed it firmly on the map of influential business schools, will be a hard act to follow. "I have a big challenge and the challenge itself is a motivator," he says.
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