What is JICM all about and what are its launch plans?

JICM is promoted by the Jagran Social Welfare Society, the non-profit arm of the Dainik Jagran group in Madhya Pradesh. In the long term, JICM will be a collection of schools training professionals in Marketing Communications Management, Electronic Communication, Digital Communication and Print Media Management. We plan to start by launching the Marketing Communications School in 2009 with the two-year PGDM (Communication) – Marketing Communications course, for which admissions are open.

What will differentiate JICM from other communication management institutes, especially MICA?

Firstly, we will be a complete communication school in the long term with separate schools for marketing communications, electronic communication, digital communication and print media management. Secondly, each of these schools will have a live advertising agency, radio station, digital laboratory and a newspaper publishing facility on campus. These agencies would work hand in hand with the local industry and do real business, of which students would be a part. This will inculcate an element of practice in the curriculum and therefore the education will not remain completely theoretical.

Advertising agencies and corporate communication firms have been run successfully by professionals who are not trained in communications management. What need is JICM really serving for the industry?

Traditionally, fresh graduates who join advertising agencies or corporate communication firms take a long ramp up time for getting acclimatized to the business, culture and environment of the company. By following a pedagogy that focuses on practice, we expect this time to come down in our graduates. Secondly, people who are 20 years into the industry now have little technological expertise and in that sense, many of them are out of touch with the latest technological advancements in the communications space. Our focus on latest technology in the media space will help bridge this gap. The digital communications school for example, would expose people to latest platforms such as mobile phones, the Internet, Facebook, Wikis and so on.

What kind of careers would the PGDM – Marketing Communications prepare students for?

Students will be prepared to join management positions in advertising agencies, corporate communication firms, media research companies and event management and direct marketing agencies.

How many seats are you launching the course with in 2009?

We are launching with 60 seats in the beginning for which we have a letter of intent from AICTE for their approval. As of now we do not know how we will expand the number of seats.

What kind of infrastructure are you building for the institute?

Our building is nearing completion and will be ready in about 3 months. The campus will be residential. As I mentioned earlier, our infrastructure would include a live advertising agency, radio station, digital studio and newspaper facility within campus.

How are you going about admissions for the course?

We will shortlist students based on their CAT and MAT scores, after which the student will have to take the JICM Entrance Test (JICMET). The JICMET will have writing tests and case studies which the students would have to solve. We’ll broadly be looking at general awareness, ability to see the communications angle to the case studies and oral and written presentation skills.

For a school admitting its first batch, how would you bring about a certain level of quality in the batch? How do you plan to not just admit leftover students?

Usually, a new institute takes a couple of years to create an identity for itself, after which if all things work then the quality increases batch by batch. However, CAT is not the only criteria we are looking at. We are also open to competent professionals with some relevant media or communications work experience, which we will give importance to while shortlisting.

Tell us more about the advertising agency you plan to run in the campus. Bhopal being a relatively low-key city, aren’t the opportunities to run a really purposeful advertising practice limited here?

If you see, none of the Hindi speaking areas in the country have a professionally run advertising agency and this is a space we can fill, by working with local businesses in and around Bhopal. The agency on campus will partly do business and partly be a training center. Part of whatever students earn from the agency would be kept by the institute.

What kind of pedagogy and curriculum have you planned for JICM?

The pedagogy would focus on practice. There would be three hours of classes every day followed by live projects in the in-house advertising agency for the remaining part of the day. Such a schedule will be spread over six trimesters across two years, with six courses in each trimester.

How many faculty members have you recruited and what is the plan for expansion in the future?

We have 3 fulltime faculty now, which we plan to increase to 8 by the time we launch the program in 2009. In the long term when we open up the other three schools, we might end up with 40 faculty members.