University Alliances (UA) is excited to kick-off the UA Professor Spotlight Series as a way to exchange insights with UA professors from around the world and share their experiences with the University Alliances Community (UAC).
For our inaugural post, Associate Professor vijayakumar.bharathi from MBA-ITBM Program of Symbiosis Centre for Information Technology, a constituent of Symbiosis International University in India, shares his views and background.
Tell us a bit about yourself.
I am an Indian living in Pune India. I am surrounded by a work environment with people happy to share and contribute knowledge. My job involves planning, designing and conducting ERP and Extended ERP Curriculum by extensively integrating SAP ECC and ByDesign for MBA students. I also offer consulting on SAP ERP curriculum and conduct Faculty Development Programs in India, Malaysia and Singapore. I am passionate about teaching and learning. My professional philosophy is “Academics triggers research and research drives academics.”
Apart from work, I love cooking, gardening and painting. I enjoy fusion cooking by integrating Chinese with spicy South Indian cuisine. We are a family of three that includes my wife and son along with me. All three of us go to school (I work in a Business School, my wife works in a High School and my son studies in a Primary school!!!). I enjoy travelling, meeting and interacting with people.
Share a bit about your SAP and UAC history.
I have been associated with SAP University Alliances in India since 2004. I am proud to state that I have been active as a UA Professor since 2004. I have been trained and certified in SAP and thankfully remember the SAP Innovation Watch link shared by Chico in 2005 from which I was first introduced to the SAP Community. Innovation Watch existed in the content areas of the SAP Service Marketplace until early 2009. My University has been with UA since 2008.
Eventually, I joined the UAC as a member on March 23, 2009. I visit UAC once a week to browse through the updates on the portal. During my training programs I conduct a separate session on introducing, navigating and accessing the UA content to faculty members.
I access the UA course library frequently these days since a lot of knowledge content is uploaded on SAP ByDesign. It is quite useful for my teaching and learning process. I also access the SAP Industry segment of the UAC portal because it provides a lot of case studies, access to videos and related content. I too belonged to the manufacturing industry for quite some time in the early 1990s; hence this portal helps to reinforce my experiences and enables new learning experiences from industry best practices and processes. I get a lot of confidence in conducting MBA Classes by bridging the gap between concepts and contexts.
My recent interest is on searching and updating knowledge on SAP HANA. I would eagerly look forward to the UAC supporting and encouraging UA Professors to build HANA based curriculum for SAP UA member Universities.
What do you like most about the University Alliances Community on the new Jive platform? How does this help/improve your regular UAC activities?
The UAC in the Jive Platform is now more interactive and collaborative. The advantages and convenience of social media is fully integrated into the UAC now. I believe students will enjoy the seamless integration between social media and UAC which will enable the stakeholders (students, faculty members, experts, and consultants) to share and contribute knowledge.
How can or do your students benefit from the UAC?
The Career Center and Student Unionare the two most wanted segments in UAC for students. I have heard and also seen students discussing the UA Career Blogs. Though majority of the students are interested in career and job prospects, a few students were also keen to look into the research opportunities section as well. I received some good insights from the research opportunities which I had given to the student to work on their mini-projects and dissertation course. The update on the Dashboard Competition in the Student Union section has been a good hit amongst the students.
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