UFV India is bubbling with energy as the fall semester approaches. While students are preparing for the semester ahead, the school is welcoming two new faculty members with experience at some of India’s premier institutes — Dr. Syed Ahmed Wajih and Ms. Shubhi Gupta.
Dr. Syed Ahmed Wajih joins UFV India as an Assistant Professor in Marketing. He earned a Ph.D. in Business Management from Integral University and has taught as an Academic Associate (Marketing) at IIM Ahmedabad.
“I realized my love and passion for teaching much before I started working. Inspiring and making an everlasting impact on a young mind has always fascinated me”, expresses Dr. Wajih. After working as a Senior Marketing Officer at Ducat India, Wajih turned his focus to teaching in 2009. “It has almost been a decade, and I have never looked back.”
Dr. Wajih has previously taught at AMA International University (located in the Kingdom of Bahrain) in the areas of Entrepreneurship, Business Innovation, Start-Ups, and Women Entrepreneurship. He also has a series of publications to his credit and has presented papers at prominent national level seminars.
As an educator, he considers it his responsibility to focus on students’ needs, abilities, and interests to optimize their engagement and success. “I aim to empower students for them to see that they have the ability to be a great generation.”
Wajih notes that while students generally lack work experience, the realities of the business world can be taught inside the classroom through applied learning methods. “To help students broaden their perspectives, my teaching activities focus on case studies from well-known case repositories, accompanied by small group exercises and videos.”
Also within the business program, UFV India welcomes Shubhi Gupta as Assistant Professor in the areas of Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management.
Before joining UFV, Gupta pursued a Ph.D. in Management from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Dhanbad and an MBA with a specialization in Human Resource Management.
“During my doctoral journey at IIT, I was associated with a voluntary group where I was actively involved in teaching and management. I realized my inclination towards teaching there, because of the satisfaction I felt in impacting students’ lives.”
As part of her Ph.D., Gupta’s research focused on virtual team functioning and behavioral processes as well as team dynamics, team effectiveness, and collaborations.
In addition to her research, Gupta has published papers in international journals indexed in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC), and Scopus, and has also presented papers at multiple national and international conferences.
“Canadian education and teaching pedagogy are based on applied learning, where I believe my years spent in research will be put to best use. My in-depth knowledge will be applied to the benefit of future global leaders.”
Gupta has also published a chapter “Virtual Workplaces: Emerging Issues for Human Resource Function for Sustainable Growth” in the book “Human Resource Management and Sustainable Growth” by Ghosh, Sandhya & Roy, Subrata Kumar. In addition, she has presented papers in premier National and International conferences like PAN IIM conferences, National Academy of Psychology (NAOP), and more.
To add value to the classroom, Gupta encourages her students to become self-directed learners through in-class discussion. “Two-way communication is the best form of sharing knowledge and discussing lessons. My aim is to always make my students feel comfortable so that they may share their views, perspectives, and opinions in the classroom and participate in fruitful discussions about the curriculum.”
Dr. Wajih and Ms. Gupta will begin teaching classes at the start of the fall semester in September.
