In today’s world, it is essential that managers adjust and adapt quickly to diverse situations, and be flexible to work with teams spread across the globe. Acquaintance to foreign cultures and etiquettes gains considerable importance in such scenarios. IIM Calcutta aims to make each one of its graduating students adept at dealing with an increasingly globalized world.

It is in this endeavor that our second year students are given the opportunity to go abroad for a trimester. This helps students learn how to work in teams composed of people from different nationalities, and also pick up the nuances of different cultures.

The student exchange program, or STEP as we like to call it, gives our students a unique opportunity to practice their skills in a global environment. This further helps them gain valuable knowledge of their peer group at the partner institute. Not only does this exchange result in life-long bonds being formed between students, but also helps them sharpen their practical skills required to work in teams composed of individuals with highly diverse backgrounds.

Students are exposed to different pedagogies of management education and many of them reported to have been pleasantly surprised by experiencing high levels of interactions with the faculty abroad. The good mix of students from different academic backgrounds, present in most European and American universities, always encourages an informal flow of knowledge between the students. This is something that might be limited or even absent in an institute that only specializes in management education.

On a more personal level, students also get to visit a variety of exotic locations, which helps them get exposed to different cultures and customs. These experiences lead to breaking of some previously held stereotypes which were based on incomplete information. Students are thus encouraged to be more tolerant and open-minded, some of the traits desired deeply in today’s managers.

The 5th trimester, out of a total of 6 that an IIMC student needs to attend, is reserved for STEP. Our students can pick courses of their choice to attend at the partner institute and they get the required academic credits at IIM Calcutta for their effort. STEP helps a student get exposed to different perspectives regarding the practice of management in the present day, and even see them being applied under various situations.