School of Business, Woxsen University - a name reckoning in the B-School world has surely enough achieved a tangible difference in the society and educational space. Through the innate values and culture, Woxsen has stayed relevant and successful in the dynamic business ecosystem. Awarded All India Rank-4 in Top Private University Category and All India Rank-14 in Top 100 B-School by Times B-School Ranking 2021, Rank-4 in Top Management Institutes under the private category, South by BW Businessworld and All India Rank-16 Top Private B-Schools, by BW Businessworld. Woxsen is also conferred with prestigious memberships by the two largest and most revered global accreditation bodies in business education - AACSB (USA) and AMBA (UK). 

Dr Raul V Rodriguez, Dean, School of Business, Woxsen University has earned his doctorate in Artificial Intelligence and Robotic Process Applications to HR from San Miguel University, Mexico. Dr Raul V Rodriguez holds an MBA, MHRM and MSc in Big Data and BI from Universidad Isabel I, Spain. 

Dr Raul V Rodriguez is a registered expert in Artificial intelligence, Intelligent Systems and Multi-agent Systems at the European Commission, Dr Raul has been nominated for the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe 2020 list and awardee at the 40 Under 40 Europe India Leaders. Alongside this, he is a regular keynote speaker and panel moderator at various national and international conferences or summits. Additionally, he is a member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, the Oxford Artificial Intelligence Society, part of the University of Oxford and the Institute for Robotics Process Automation & Artificial Intelligence.  

He dwells at length on how the institute has managed to stay atop the technological advancements and ahead of the curve. 

With Industry 5.0 taking over has the definition of Management Education changed? 

Certainly not. The beauty of management education is its high volatility and adjustability to the market changes across industries while remaining unique, sharp and laser-focused. Hence, Industry 5.0 simply represents a ‘next chapter’ with the active merger of smart systems within our daily operations, forcing drastic but necessary changes in the curriculum, delivery and orientation of management courses.  

In fact, I would dare to say that this evolution was due, to cope with the fast-pacing market scenario. 

Tell us about the ‘Holistic Development Approach' followed at the School of Business? 

We do make sure our students exit the institution with a 360-degree transformation, ranging from their appearance to their skill set. 

Touching upon the physical development, Woxsen is spread across a 200-acre green campus with numerous sports and recreational facilities to ensure the active development of psychomotor abilities. Similarly, this enhances their emotional intra and interpersonal abilities to be able to jump into the next chapter of their lives. This is complemented with an on-campus counsellor to understand their deepest personal needs to be addressed and personal interaction with me every fortnight.  

On the other hand, through programs such as 'Career Coach', 'Mentor-mentee' and Preparatory training, students undergo exhaustive one-to-one coaching to ensure the development of their social abilities.  

Lastly, and critically, their intellectual capabilities are moved up the ladder through high-quality sessions by top-notch faculty from across the globe, along with a mandatory program on research publications to be completed successfully as part of the degree-awarding requirements.  

B-Schools are usually linked as an upscale for commerce students, but with the recent global transformations in the business world, has the audience scope widened? 

Management education is open to all streams, from B.Tech to Pharmacy. It is a field that everybody will need at some point in their lives. Given this necessity, the growth of profile variations at the School-level has seen an exponential development over the last few years, which is surely enriching the classroom delivery and student-faculty collaborations. 

Is there any specific quality or trait that you look at when admitting students into MBA programs or is it purely based on academic performance? 

Academic performance is one of the key factors when selecting students, however, we pay attention to other additional qualities that represent a holistic approach to the student’s persona: 

Leadership: it represents a result or outcome that you couldn’t and didn’t reach solely on your own. Leadership is about achieving your goals by harnessing the energy and ideas of other people. 

Collaborative style: the students shall work well with others and put the good of the group ahead of his or her self-interest. 

Integrity: honesty, ethics, and morals. This centres on your sense of right and wrong. 

Analytical intelligence: the student’s ability to run numbers, solve quantitative problems, identify patterns in the information and make data-driven decisions. 

Emotional intelligence: also called “interpersonal intelligence”, is the aptitude for understanding other people’s feelings and the student’s capacity as a leader for tapping into emotion to inspire your followers to realize a high degree of success. 

Creativity: or creative intelligence, relates to the student’s ability to cope with new situations by synthesizing prior knowledge and skills in a novel way. 

Tell us about the various Applied learning initiatives like – Club Activities, Project Works, Industry Projects and articles in leading magazines that MBA students take up? 

Clubs are the practical representation of experiential learning or “learning by doing”. This is the war zone where students develop their leadership approaches and implement the learnings acquired throughout their degree. Similarly, live projects or industry projects is what signified the alignment of academia with industry in a meaningful way, leading to an increase in job prospects and hard as well as soft skills development.  

On the other hand, we, at Woxsen, make sure that students develop the necessary essay writing capabilities and their research orientation by publication. It is embedded in the curriculum to publish one Scopus-indexed journal along with additional magazine articles co-authored with the faculty.  

Please tell us about the Bloomberg Financial Terminal at Woxsen University? 

With the objective of looking to attract the best students and provide a comprehensive finance curriculum, a Bloomberg Finance Lab has become a key element to enable students to obtain top-notch roles in the financial services domain. Being one of the few Universities in India hosting 20 terminals on campus, Woxsen University is a role model setting the pillars of the future Indian education system. 

Having said that, The Bloomberg Terminal also allows faculty members to bring the real world into the classroom and provides students with the same platform used by the world’s leading banks, corporations and government agencies to enhance their academic studies across a wide range of disciplines. 

Being associated with Big brands helps a B-School prove its strength, please throw some light on why do the top brands trust Woxsen for their talent needs? 

The Management Programs at Woxsen University were crafted out of the need, to develop an outstanding cadre of leaders who will help make Indian industry globally competitive, by providing them with an open and conducive environment for research and education, through an integrated system of mentoring and teaching by nationally and internationally distinguished faculty, practitioners and industry leaders. Alongside this, our students have the unique opportunity to undertake International Exchange Programs with one of our 15 international, AACSB-accredited partners, which preps them for the globally competitive environment. Another key facet is the 200+ Industry interface activities like Leadership Series, #Unicorn Calling, HR Conclave and more that make our students industry-ready.