Sunil Chopra, currently the senior associate dean for curriculum and teaching at Northwestern Universitys Kellogg School of Management, has been named interim dean of the Kellogg School. He takes over from Prof Dipak C Jain, who will step down as the dean on September 1, 2009.

Management (SJMSOM) IIT Bombay, is organizing Finance and Marketing Continuums 2009 on July 18 and July 19, 2009. Continuum is a rolling seminar series that is organized every year by the students of the MBA School -- SJMSOM, IIT Bombay. Each Continuum brings together eminent speakers from the industry as well as the academia and focuses on issues and challenges faced by management functions.

The Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneshwar (XIMB), organized its annual summit Arthashastra, a budget discussion forum conducted by X-Fin, the Finance Club of XIMB, on July 11, 2009.
The event was graced by eminent speakers like Prof Abhijit Sen (Member, Planning Commission of India), FR Joseph (Director, RBI, Eastern Region), Prof Pulin Nayak, (Delhi School of Economics), Jitendra Balakrishnan (DMD, IDBI Bank, Mumbai), Joyant Nayak (Energy Consulting Division, Feedback Ventures) and Rashmi Ranjan Das (Additional Commissioner, Income Tax) among others.

T.A. Pai Management Institute (TAPMI) Manipal inducted a new batch of 120 students in the Post Graduate Diploma in Management program for the session 2009-11. TAPMI also introduced the new batch to the MBA program in a formal way through a week-long orientation program organized at the institute between July 6 and 11, 2009.

The CII will be organizing the National Conference on Skill Development 2009 - Strengthening the Delivery System with the theme of Understanding the National Skills Policy on August 4, 2009, at New Delhi. Talking about the conference, the CII said, This conference is an attempt towards introducing the policy to the various stakeholders. The key objectives of the conference are to understand the ethos ad concepts, identify stakeholder roles for ensuring delivery and to ensure quality and relevance.

AIMA is organizing the 36th National Management Convention on September 18 and 19, 2009 at Chennai. The National Management Convention this year with the theme Creating Lasting Value will explore various factors, both external and internal, that impact organizations. AIMA said, The convention will be an enriching experience for all those who want to truly understand what it takes to build an organization that can sustain over decades of varying economic cycles.

Management Development Institute (MDI) Gurgaon is organizing the seventh edition of the Information Technology Panorama the Conference on Information Systems, Technology and Management (CISTM) at its campus from July 13 to July 15, 2009. This year the conference has moved to MDI Gurgaon from IIT Delhi. The CISTM is organized every year by the Information Institute USA in different parts of the world.

The importance of effective Human Resource Management, in the volatile business environment as the world is facing today, cannot be over emphasized. Institute of HRD will be hosting Bangalore HR Summit 2009 on December 18 & 19, 2009 at Bangalore. In this two day HR Summit CEOs, Human Resource Professionals, and Academicians from India, Asia Pacific & Middle East are expected to participate and deliberate on the theme Innovation in HRM.

The Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) gave away SAIL HR Excellence Awards to seven Indian manufacturing companies for path breaking contributions in the field of People Management Processes on July 9, 2009. The Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A) was the Knowledge Partner of the event. Those who received SAIL HR Excellence Awards are Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL), Moser Baer and Tata Motors (large scale companies category), Castrol and Jindal Steel & Power Limited (medium scale category) and ITW Signode and Honeywell (small scale category).

Top MBA schools saw an increase in batch sizes in spite of recession writes Amrita Das from MBAUniverse.com