Raj Khandekar: “Once you live in two democracies, you’ve become a citizen of the world."

Management Professor Raj Khandekar never realized that his fascination with business planning and organization would take him from his native India to Denver, Colo.

Khandekar earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from IIT, Bombay. When he attended the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, for his master’s degree in business administration, he had plans to pursue marketing jobs in industry. But the institute not only provided him his first graduate degree, but also his first job.

“I conducted a session for the first year students because they wanted to brush up at the end before their final exams; the faculty heard about it and they said we’d like you to join the institute, which was a pretty big honor,” he says, “considering it’s one of the top three Institutes of Management in India since its inception.”

Khandekar joined the institute as a Research Fellow and realized that he needed more education to advance in the field. “There was no Ph.D. in business in India at that time,” he says. It prompted him to apply to doctoral programs in the United States. He ultimately earned his Ph.D. in business from the University of Kansas in 1983. In the final year of his doctoral program, he was recruited by CU-Denver as an assistant professor.

For him, it was love at first sight when he hiked in the Rockies. Khandekar decided to make Denver, and the United States his home. “Once you live in two democracies, you’ve become a citizen of the world; the world is your country in a sense,” he says. “In a democracy, you feel free – that’s an important thing.”

His intimate knowledge of India benefited Metro State in January 2008 when he and College administrators travelled to Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad to explore exchange opportunities.

He taught at CU-Denver for several years but decided to switch over to Metro State. “I came here because this is a teaching school and I really liked it. First I think of myself as a teacher and a great part of my research is triggered by student questions and the questions I asked as a student,” Khandekar says.”

Khandekar has been researching and writing about strategic management for more than 25 years. “I got into case writing with Dr. Debbie Gilliard (now chair of the Management department) a few years ago… we wrote two cases and after publishing them in conference proceedings they both got picked up by a textbook for three consecutive editions… that makes me feel pretty good about the quality of our cases,” he says. Case studies are used in student textbooks to give them a better understanding of managing a business strategically.

Khandekar enjoys teaching strategic management classes whether the class meets online or in a classroom. In both settings he uses an online business strategy game in which his students compete against each other while learning how to develop strategies and operate a business hands on.

In Fall 2009, Khandedar will be on sabbatical to write his book, tentatively titled “Strategic Leadership and the Zeroth P.”

“I’m hoping my book will combine all the ideas in my research and teaching,” he says.