MDI pioneers summer internship evaluation initiative
Friday, June 08, 2007

Management Development Institute (MDI)¸ Gurgaon took yet another initiative to connect with the corporate world for enhancing the education imparted in the B-School.

It pioneered a real-time corporate feedback process for summer-internships that students undertake after completing their first year of course work.

 The process involved an extensive exercise of monitoring¸ evaluating and mentoring of its students during their summer internship to help bridge gaps that the industry might have identified in the ‘Management graduates in the making’ by the institute. This unprecedented activity was in response to a decision by a high level committee of the MDI faculties of its post graduate programmes - PGPM and PGHR. The credits accorded for summer internship have also been increased.

 The May 2007 exercise¸ undertaken in Mumbai¸ Delhi NCR¸ Banglore and Chennai that have significant MDI summer interns¸ received unprecedented response from almost all stake holders of India. Organizational guides of more than 70 companies for 148 students gave their feedback in person and on telephone. One intern’s guide at IBM Pune visited MDI to provide the feedback and commended the initiative. Another lauded that for the first time in their 15 years of career in the company the institute took the initiative to monitor the interns’ working. As a result of the interaction¸ summer projects of many students had to be altered or modified in order to make them experience new meaningful challenges.

 This initiative proved highly popular in the corporate world. The industry has overwhelmingly responded by opening up greater industry interface possibilities like guest lectures¸ participation and support for academic initiatives like workshops¸ etc.