But post-1990 developments have created spaces for smart students as well. Smart students are those who are not consistently good performers, but are multidimensional. They do very well in CAT, for example, (90 percentile and above), but not nearly well enough to make them a member of that elite club of 3000 candidates.

Earlier, this group of smart students would get into B grade management schools and then work under those who graduated out of better schools.

Not anymore!

Today, smart students have opportunities. Huge opportunities

One such exciting opportunity is communication management. Communication management refers to managing an array of creative industries such as advertising, television, radio, event management, direct marketing, entertainment media, corporate communicationa

Why is communication an exciting area of work? Let us quickly understand this.

Itas creative: You work in the realm of ideas and you work with a team of creative people. That requires finer sensibilities and nuanced managerial skills.

Itas challenging: Yes, all management and marketing jobs are. But here the challenge comes from constantly working on new ideas. The advertising agency never gives us the same slogan twice, the newspaper editor never works on the same news story twice. Each assignment demands a refreshing set of ideas, a new beginning.

Itas immensely satisfying: The satisfaction comes not only from the rewards your employer offers you. It comes from public recognition.

Itas expanding: The communication sector is growing at a rapid clip. Ask yourself: how big was Internet when you were at school? How big it is now? How many radio and television stations were there when you were in school? How many are there now? And by the time you graduate out of a communication management school, how many more would there be!

These are the hallmark of communication industry. Compare it with any marketing or management job and you would realise how different communication management is.

So, smart students make smart choices! If best management schools are not adequately equipped to accommodate them, they choose to ride on a new wave. The expanding communication sector is one such wave. The benefit of this sector: Your career graph goes up steeply, as steeply as those who have graduated out of the best management school.

Today, the various sectors of the communication industry are faced with severe shortage of qualified and trained management professionals.

Jagran Institute of Communication and Management (JICM)

JICM seeks to empower students with knowledge and skills required for managing an array of communication businesses. Its mandate is to produce communication decision makers who will occupy commanding positions in areas of communication policy, strategy and action.More specifically, it would guide the young students in pursuit of knowledge along with a sense of professional accomplishment in terms of employability in the corporate world.

Industry interface: JICM is established by the Jagran Social Welfare Society, a charitable enterprise of the Jagran group of newspapers (Madhya Pradesh). Dainik Jagran, a 55-year old Hindi daily, which is the largest read newspaper of India. The instituteas linkage with the communication industry is, therefore, beyond doubt.

JICMas understanding of the practice of communication management is evident in the composition of its faculty. The facultyas background spans such fields asmarketing, management, political science, marketing research, parliamentary research, security studies, and the development communication sector.

JICMas industry orientation is also reflected in the composition of its Academic Advisory Board. The Board is a blend of prominent academicians and corporate leaders. Arijit Sengupta (President, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide), Navroze Dhondy (CEO, Creatigies Communications), and Binod C Agrawal (Director-General, TALEEM Research Foundation, ZEE TV) represent three important domains of marketing communication; Prof. Ravi Sundaram(Fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies), Prof. P K Biswas(Indian Institute of Forest Management), Prof. Arbind Sinha(Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad), and Prof. Srinivas Melkote (Bowling Green State University, Ohio) represent the intellectual domain.

JICM: Indiaas 1st practise school for communication management: JICM will be a complete practice school. This means, if you study marketing communication management, you learn the media and managerial skills at an advertising agency on the school. Electronic Media Management students will learn studio management (and other skills) managing the campus radio and television stations respectively. Similarly, students will practice their newspaper management skills producing a newspaper from the campus. No communication school either in the private sector or the university system does so.

In addition, JICMas Communication Consultancy Centre (CCC) will get students in on live research projects. The CCC will seamlessly integrate with instruction-led learning. This certainly will put the students at a distinct advantage. Students can only anticipate the advantages: not only their learning improves; they showcase their credentials to the would-be employer.

Pedagogy: A management institute must focus on strategy. Each of the six subjects taught every trimester at JICM will have strategy sessions built into it. Morning sessions will be devoted to classroom instruction and post-lunch sessions will be practical strategy sessions in workshop mode. Even the instituteas architecture emphasizes the workshop mode of learning. The institute has 4 big classrooms and 18 small workshop halls fitted with modern gadgets. JICMas director, Pradeep Krishnatray says, aAt JICM, the focus will be on self-learning; on thinking communication. aStudentsa will be trained to see their two-year stay at JICM as a precursor to placementa.

Future plans: When fully developed, JICM will comprise of four communication schools, symbolizing the convergence with media. The four schools are:

1) Marketing Communication Management
2) Digital Communication Management
3) Electronic Media Management, and
4) Newspaper Management

The four schools together represent the inter-relatedness between the media, and the inter-disciplinary nature of communication education. JICM would like to be recognised as the first school to be providing training in important and emerging areas of communication.

As a new institute JICM can only lay claim to a bright future. From July 2009, JICM will launch its first school – Marketing Communication Management School. Essential to its philosophy is the implicit belief that each student shall get from it more than the two years she/he invests in JICM!

For further details:
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 0755 a 2696969
Website: www.jicm.edu.in