Karma Yoga

“Karma Yoga is the attaining through unselfish work of that freedom which is the goal of all human nature”

(Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works, Vol.1, p.110)

Trying to learn leadership in a classroom is like trying to learn swimming in a classroom. Just as a swimming pool is required to learn swimming, a live setting with actual potential followers is needed to learn leadership. KARMA-YOGA, a Leadership Experiential Project (LEP) is an integral part of the Post Graduate Program in Management (PGPM) curriculum at Great Lakes.

The project, guided by Dr. Venkat R. Krishnan (Director, Yale-Great Lakes Center for Management Research), is an unique medium for students to connect with ground realities and experientially learn transformational leadership. The LEP creates a mutual win-win situation for both the students and the villagers. While the villages get budding managers to enable the villagers to lift themselves into their better selves, the students acquire a first-hand understanding of what it means to create followers and transform them.

There are 20 villages surrounding the institute's campus that have been adopted by Great Lakes for the LEP. Students visit these Karma-Yoga villages every week. The mission is to enhance the self-esteem and self-efficacy of the villagers (i.e., to empower them), so that they are able to lead a better quality life.

In this attempt by Great Lakers to transform people belonging to nearby villages, the key focus has been in the fields of education, health, agriculture, and small business. Over the past years, Great Lakers have been involved in organizing health camps, financial inclusion programs, agricultural training programs, activity-based learning programs etc. in association with leading hospitals and several NGOs. Karma-Yoga project runs throughout the year and has been quietly transforming the lives of the people around the institute's campus.

Empirical Study

Empirical study – a unique value proposition from Great lakes institute of Management- is a fully mentored 6 credit, 3 term rigorous academic activity involving the identification of a core business problem and ways and means of solving the same. The problem selected pertains to the chosen horizontal function and vertical domain specialization of the student. The coordination with respect to this empirical study will be handled by the Yale-Great Lakes Center for Management Research.

Some of the salient features of the empirical study are:

• Runs through the latter half of the first year and the former half of the second year
• Requires 120 hours of out-of-class academic input
• Done individually or in groups of two or three students
• Fully mentored by a Great Lakes faculty as well as by an industry mentor
• Outcome of the study is a paper co-authored by the student with the guide

The Institute is planning to have global teams of students working on their empiricals together.

Summer Internship

The summer internship of Great Lakes is structured more in tune with the traditional summer internships offered across B schools. It involves rigorous hands on, on site industry exposure spread over a duration of 8 - 10 weeks. If empirical study takes on a theoretical flavor in terms of problem analysis, the summer internship takes a hands on applications flavor.

Some of the salient features of the summer internship are:

• Runs through the months of April-May-June at the end of the first year.
• Students will be required to put in not less than 120 hours of input.
• This study is done either individually or by groups of two or three students jointly.
• The internship would be mentored by a Great Lakes faculty as well as by an industry mentor.

The benefits that are common to both summer internship and empirical study are:

• Global academic exposure
• Working with globally connected student teams
• On field real time experience
• Building live business solving capabilities.

Semester Abroad Program*

The two year Post Graduate Diploma in Management is a pioneer in many respects. As a niche program, its focus on emerging markets brings to the fore the intricacies of doing business with several countries. Thus, understanding the people, culture and way of life, sentiments and beliefs etc. of the other economies forms a major learning objective. The best way to do that is to ‘Immerse’ oneself in studying the various facets of life, history, society and economy of the chosen country. While the Foreign Immersion programs (typically a week to ten days spent in another country) offer an eye-opening experience for the students, Great Lakes has voted in favor of spending an entire semester abroad and learning the nuances of trade, commerce, industry, politics, economics, life and society. The Semester Abroad Program is a step in that direction, where the student opts to study a semester of the course in a different country. Great Lakes is currently engaged in talking to global universities in cities as wide spread as Shanghai, Hong Kong, Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Durban, Johannesburg, Nairobi and Brasilia – given that the program’s focus is on emerging economies. By the end of the semester, the students have been mentored by leading authorities on various subjects, have networked with a truly diverse set of persons, lived the life of a local and by their mere presence, amassed a wealth of information and knowledge about that country!

*Optional with additional cost.