Educationist, Founder and Dean Emeritus of Great Lakes Institute of Management (GLIM) Bala V Balachandran passed away on Tuesday at the age of 84.

“With profound grief, we inform you of the passing of Dr Bala V Balachandran. Uncle Bala, as he was fondly called, was an inspiration to many. Although we will miss him dearly, we shall carry him in our hearts and live by the value system that he built for us,” GLIM said in a Twitter post.

Balachandran did his BSc (Hons.) in Mathematics in 1959, followed by MA (Statistics) in 1961 and MSc Applied Statistics in 1963 at Annamalai University.

He began his teaching career in 1960 while being a graduate student at Annamalai University. In 1967, he moved to the University of Dayton and to Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh in 1971 where he taught management courses while working on his doctorate.

In 1973, Balachandran joined the Kellogg Graduate School of Management faculty and from 1979-83, he chaired the Department of Accounting and Information Systems. In 1984, he was appointed Distinguished Professor of Accounting and Information Systems and Decision Sciences. He was also director of the Accounting Research Center until 2006.

Prof. Bala was instrumental in setting up several management institutes in India. He was part of the team that recruited the first set of faculty members for Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore in the 1960s. He was also involved in designing the MBA programmes at MDI, Gurgaon and Indian School of Business (ISB) at Hyderabad, where he chaired the Dean Search and Faculty and Curriculum committees till 2002.

In 2004, founded Great Lakes Institute of Management fulfilling his dream of putting Chennai as a destination for international management education.

He is the recipient of India’s fourth highest civilian award the ‘Padmashri’ in 2001, awarded in recognition of his contribution towards higher education in India. Source: The Hindu