By: Teagan Jones and Dr. Vicky Klima
Dr. Santosh Nandi, assistant professor in the Department of Management, is the newest addition to the Honors College team of academic mentors. In May 2024, Dr. Nandi became the Honors College academic mentor for students majoring in the College of Business. Honors College mentors play a crucial role in the Honors College mission by supporting holistic development and fostering engagement beyond individual disciplines.
Interim Dean Vicky Klima shared, “Recently I attended an alumni event with Dr. Nandi and immediately noticed his joy in connecting with people during the cocktail hour. I think networking comes naturally to Dr. Nandi because he is genuinely interested in everyone's story. He asks questions, listens, and uses what he learns to bring people together. I am excited that as our newest Honors College academic mentor, Dr. Nandi, is listening to our Honors College of Business students' stories and connecting them to great opportunities on and off campus.”
Dr. Nandi was originally interested in becoming an academic mentor within the Honors College because he enjoys interacting with high-achieving and highly motivated students. He shared,
The most rewarding aspect for me about working with Honors College students is the aspiration to build and nurture a very long-term connection between our great students and the university. When they have become our alumni, they are the ones who are going to narrate their college experience as folklore to people around them.
Honors College academic mentors empower and engage students by collaborating with them to:
Strategically navigate the Honors curriculum, major decisions, and general education choices to explore and define personal and professional long-term goals, including plans for post-graduate education or employment.
Identify and pursue co-curricular and extra-curricular opportunities to further refine and achieve their goals.
Become leaders, healthy, well-balanced community members, and engaged local-global citizens.
Honors College mentors begin working with students before they arrive on campus, partnering with them during Honors Orientation to develop plans for completing their undergraduate requirements, including majors, minors, and general education. Honors College advising is unique in that advisors support their students for the entire duration of their time at Appalachian. Even after they declare their majors, mentors continue to guide students through University Honors requirements such as interdisciplinary coursework, international education, and the completion of their honors thesis.
Dr. Nandi’s focus in mentoring Honors College students at Appalachian State is to “make sure that students maintain their Honors requirements, and at the same time, professionally shine in their majoring degree through internships, club activities, professional networking, and research opportunities.”
Many Honors College academic mentors like Dr. Nandi are also faculty members in their advising area, teaching one course fewer than they would otherwise and reassigning that time to Honors mentoring. As established professionals with terminal degrees, our mentors are well-connected in their fields and best-positioned to understand available opportunities. Their professional expertise and experiences, combined with the personal relationships they develop with students, allow them to connect each student with international programs, internships, research experiences, and leadership opportunities that specifically support each student’s success.
Dr. Nandi earned a Ph.D. in management from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, a Master of Business Administration from Xavier University in Bhubaneswar,India, and a bachelor's degree in architecture from the Indian Institute of Technology in Roorkee, India.
He has over ten years of experience as a technology entrepreneur in the global position systems (GPS) industry, which has led him to a deeper understanding of location-based services. During his time in this industry, he “assisted a few of the leading technology companies in developing and refining their location technologies.” In 2009, Dr. Nandi received the prestigious Red Herring Award for his location-based technology start-up. This award gave his start-up a boost to strengthen and become more innovative. In 2011, his start-up company was acquired by another leading company based in North America. This led him to earn a doctorate with a goal of “becoming a full-time academician and nurturing young minds studying business and entrepreneurship.”
Dr. Nandi currently researches sustainable business and management topics such as circular economy, blockchain technology, natural resource management, human-computer interactions, and social value creation. He teaches classes on strategic management, life cycle analysis, and circular economy. He also incorporates community engagement in his teaching. He explained, “Every year I along with my students study different small, local businesses as classroom projects and offer them our findings on how to revamp or improve their current business models.”
The ideas students develop and research in his classes often connect students to thesis topics. He stated, “these concepts and their recent advances are pertinent to Honors education, especially, to those who are business majors. I tend to push my Honors students to get acquainted with these concepts and link those to their broader thesis ideas. Maybe, they would come up with novel research or a practical handbook that their future employers or anyone else may find reasonable to adapt into their existing systems.”
After working with students to develop thesis ideas and creating a research plan, Dr. Nandi helps them to “establish the research gap and novelty aspect of the topic and guide the student to explore what has already been done, identifying methods and materials to answer the research questions, and how to interpret and present the findings in a way that has useful implications for both theory and practice.”
While a doctoral student at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Dr. Nandi worked as a research assistant and technology commercialization specialist for the university’s Office of Research Translation. In this position, he supported faculty with patents and copyrights of their research outcomes.
As an Honors College academic mentor, Dr. Nandi’s goal is to guide students who may want to become future technologists and entrepreneurs toward their dreams. Dr. Nandi encourages his Honors College students to get involved with his research which is highly relevant for business majors and the interdisciplinary honors education. He looks forward to opportunities for collaborative research with Honors College students.
