Sunday Ice Breaking? Welcome to the Summer School!

1st June Sunday Ice Breaking was the first session. All of us like a disciplined herd got assembled and rest is pictory .

Last two days to Go Reflections #1

The  IIMU-Duke summer school at IIM Udaipur campus is going to end within next two days. I couldn't resist the temptation of writing a blog and sharing  my experiences so far in last 40 odd days . Before coming for this programme , I did a bit on online search about the summer school, tried to skim facebook pages, blogs, online space etc etc but I couldn't find student experiences. Technically this is second summer school batch .  There is ample information available about the programme on both IIMU and Duke websites, but that's what they feed you.

Our 30 member batch here is a mix of Indian development sector professionals,MPP students from Duke University and Students from some of the finest Indian universities ( most of them are recent pass-outs and ready to join their organisations right-way).
High of this programme is the diversity it brings not just in terms of practitioners & students but also in terms of faculty which ranges from IIMU to Not-for-Profit leaders to Duke University and other foreign universities. Infrastructure is little low but not bad. When I landed here on May 31st 2014, Candidly speaking, I was shocked!  - You don't expect that at an IIM? what I had seen as  as hostel on IIMU website was very different from the place I had landed in ( may be my assumption was wrong?). IIMU was established 3 years back , so they are still grappling with infra issues.

Girls Hostel for Boys?

The classical Guantanamo Look

 Hostel  is actually a girls hostel building of adjoining Mohan Lal Sukhadia university. Although quite spacious but sometimes it gives you a Guantanamo look with free flow of lizards and frogs ( in night) but no mosquitoes . And Mind you eye of heaven soars as high as 47 degrees in late may and June.
As usual , like any other Government university campus, it is quite away from main markets, so if you are expecting McD or Subways and KFC around , you may have to travel at-least 3 Km from your room at Nearby lakecity mall. Surroundings are quite deserted and if you are luck one , you may get a auto/tuk-tuk at INR 50 ( but do bargain for 30/40). Else walk down to university main gate and take a sharing auto for INR 5 to nearby lake city mall.

Right here, I don't want to feed too much in a single blogpost. I have my presentation tomorrow and have to fine tune the slide deck.

I will be talking about Programme Design, methodology, field visit, expectations match/mismatch and lot more in following blogs. Stay tuned.