A 1: Introduction: Sharmila Katre

Reflections: As the Journey starts……

My association with the Pearl Academy of Fashion has been since its inception. In 1993 along with a small team of six enterprising individuals, we started off on a daring journey of setting up an institution of vocational higher learning that would take on established giants like the NIFT and NID. In these past 19 years as the Academy has grown from strength to strength, its mission, vision and the mandate for vocational learning of a global quality standard has continued to grow and expand with each passing year. In the course of this journey, I have left the Academy on two sabbaticals to go back to the industry to ‘re-charge my batteries’ and come back to share my knowledge with my students. In the process I have worn many hats at Pearl; that of a tutor, programme leader, curriculum developer, department head and administrator. Currently I am the programme leader for the Post Graduate Diploma programme in Fashion Marketing.

I like to think of my career as a wonderful series of accidents and unplanned incidents. When I completed my graduate studies in the Russian Language in 1978, I had not even imagined, in my wildest dreams that I would ultimately end up as a teacher of Fashion Business. What began as a temporary job to earn money to pay for my then learning and study ambitions in the field of language and literature, ended up as my main line career. In 1979, I was recruited by DCM Ltd., in their export division as a management trainee, because of my language skills in Russian, French and English. DCM Ltd. was a leading textile company with businesses in textiles and apparels for the domestic Indian market and the international export market. I was employed to basically help them market their merchandise in the erstwhile Soviet Union, which was then a large untapped market for textiles and apparels from India. Also because of the many bilateral trade agreements between the USSR and India, trade between the two nations attracted lucrative tax subsidies and licenses that were commercially beneficial for an organization like DCM Ltd.

My eighteen months as a management trainee with DCM became the foundation of my strong grounding in the business of textiles, apparel and ultimately fashion. Since in those days vocational education in clothing and textiles was not institutionalized apart from the field of textile engineering, DCM had a very hands on approach to training its personnel based on the merchandise and commercial requirements of the business. My eighteen months as a trainee were spent on the shop floor learning about the product, its design development and manufacturing process and business commercials.

Being married to an hotelier with a transferable job required me to move with my husband and family to wherever his profession took him in India. In many ways this was a blessing as far as my career growth was concerned as it gave me an opportunity work with the industry in different parts of the country, thereby developing my strength and depth of knowledge of the textile industry and product; its source and manufacturing processes; business demands and commercial viability; and logistics. It also made me realize how widespread this industry was and it’s huge potential for growth linked to my own career growth. In the past 32 years with Clothing and Textile Industry in India, my areas of specialism have included Merchandising, Marketing, Product Development and Sourcing of Textiles and Apparels. Over the years I have headed Merchandising and Buying organizations with principals in Europe and Australia.

The shift to teaching in 1991 was a result of an invitation by the erstwhile Director of NIFT to help them out with the delivery of their PG Diploma Apparel Marketing & Merchandising Programme. Industry feedback to NIFT was that their cohorts had a very poor understanding of the relevance of their learning to the needs of the industry. Mrs. Jha, the Director, felt one of the ways to overcome this was to involve industry professionals in the delivery of their programmes. As NIFT could not afford the industry remuneration packages for these professionals, the best route was through guest lectures and part time teaching engagements. For me this change came at a time when I was at the crossroads of my life as a career woman and a mother. Demands of heading a business organization and looking after two teenage boys were creating stress in my professional career and my personal life. From the outside teaching appeared to be an easy profession, with limited demands on one’s time and seemed the perfect career change. Teaching at NIFT would allow me to keep my industry associations, and simultaneously let me share with the students a knowledge base in which I had a strong practical and applied grounding. NIFT offered me a teaching position as an associate professor and agreed to allow me to consult in the industry as part of my terms of employment so that my remunerations would be more or less at par and I would not feel financially shortchanged.

Once I embarked on my journey as a teacher I realized that there was more to teaching than preparing and delivering lectures and marking assignments. One month into my teaching assignment I realized I had taken on the awesome responsibility of shaping and influencing the futures of all these wonderful young people who were my students. It also dawned on me that the knowledge and understanding of their vocation that they would carry into the industry and their careers would be based on what they learnt from me, with me and through me.

Teaching is definitely not a profession to be taken lightly.

And so began the second phase of my career, and training and learning – this time as a teacher. As NIFT did not offer any formalized training on teaching or organizing ones work as a pedagogue, a lot of my ‘learning’ and ‘training’ was self initiated and self taught through observation of fellow teachers, self study, introspection, reflection and a lot of common sense. Since then I have taught on postgraduate and undergraduate programmes as a faculty member at NIFT and the Pearl Academy of Fashion, and conducted Industry Workshops, EDPs and seminars. I have been a core member of research teams responsible for fashion, colour and textile forecasting for international textile fairs held in India, and been a principal team member on industry training & development projects funded by the Overseas Development Agency of the British Government, UNDP and GTZ.

My first formal training as a teacher was after I joined Pearl and was assigned with the task of developing a PG diploma curriculum that was to be validated by the Nottingham Trent University. The NTU team conducted a workshop with the curriculum team so that the curriculum documents were correctly designed keeping in mind the programme outcomes, teaching and learning and assessments and evaluations. From there on as a part of the faculty development process the Pearl Academy instituted annual week long faculty development workshops in pedagogy to upgrade, develop and empower its teaching staff and maintain the quality of its study programmes.

The PGCHE was introduced at Pearl in 2006 January. At this time I had left the Academy to rejoin the industry and was therefore unable to enroll with the first cohort. On my return in 2010 I realized how immensely this pedagogic input had contributed to the growth of the teaching systems and the student learning experience at Pearl. I realized that even though I had the experience of years, I still had to be a part of this learning journey to grow even further as a teacher. The PGCHE was essential to put into perspective and streamline much of what I have practiced over the years as teacher and an industry trainer. It would take me beyond - to a level where my abilities as a student, teacher and a mentor would further evolve; helping me to understand better the dynamic nature of my now chosen vocation.