CSUB selects professor for social entrepreneurship fellowship

Dr. Sumita Sarma is inaugural fellow of Mahatma Gandhi Fellowship funded by Patel Foundation

By California State University, Bakersfield

September 19^th, 2024

California State University, Bakersfield has selected a professor to serve as the first recipient of a fellowship focused on social entrepreneurship.

Associate Professor of Management Dr. Sumita Sarma has been selected to be the inaugural fellow of the Mahatma Gandhi Fellowship for Social Entrepreneurship, created through the support of a $1 million gift from the Ravi and Naina Patel Foundation.

The goal of the two-year fellowship — which began in August with the start of the 2024-25 academic year — is to inspire young entrepreneurs to run environmentally and socially sustainable businesses that donate a portion of their profits toward addressing societal issues in our region, such as homelessness, addiction, pollution, wildfires and water scarcity.

“I feel truly honored and elated to be selected for the inaugural Mahatma Gandhi Fellow for Social Entrepreneurship,” Dr. Sarma said. “The fellowship is timely and needed given that our community is facing significant societal and environmental challenges.”

As part of the fellowship, Dr. Sarma and a student assistant will develop materials such as lesson plans and case studies that can be used in corporate social responsibility classes as well as 10- to 15-minute lessons that can be incorporated into any class curriculum across the university.

Dr. Sarma also intends to develop plans that can be used for the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation’s venture accelerator program.

“When the new entrepreneurs come and attend the accelerator, we want them to be more mindful of their societal impact, social value creation and social innovation as they’re thinking about creating economic wealth,” she said.

The goal is to create materials that specifically address the challenges our region faces. Dr. Sarma hopes to get input from community members and local business leaders on the course materials to ensure they are aligned with local needs.

Dr. Sarma will conduct applied research as part of the fellowship in the areas of social entrepreneurship, business and social responsibility and the improvement of workplace experiences to promote a healthy work-life balance.

The research will be presented at academic conferences and events, in academic and in local media.

Dr. Sarma is also working on organizing events for students on campus as part of the fellowship, the first of which will be a film screening about Gandhi on Oct. 2 in honor of his birthday.

She is also hoping to hold an event hosting a couple of peace walkers at CSUB to share their experiences with students and reiterate the importance of peace, social justice and harmony.

“We are beyond excited at the selection of Dr. Sarma for the Gandhi Fellowship for Social Entrepreneurship,” said Dr. Naina Patel. “This program will help inculcate Gandhian business practices and values into the youth, which emphasizes equity, social justice and cooperative rather than competitive business practices.”

Dean of the College of Business and Public Administration Deborah Cours said she’s excited about the fellowship and its potential to educate students about how to use business to create positive social change.

“I’m very grateful for the generosity of the Ravi and Naina Patel Foundation to expand our capacity to educate and engage CSUB students and our entire region on social entrepreneurship, corporate responsibility and leading for the greater good,” she said. “Dr. Sarma is qualified as the inaugural fellow through her scholarship and teaching interests, as well as her ongoing participation and leadership in the CSUB Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the Business Research and Education Center.”

'A better place to live in'

Dr. Sarma has lived and worked in three countries: India — her home country — as well as France and the United States. She has been a faculty member at CSUB since 2018 after receiving her Ph.D. in entrepreneurship and innovation from the University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC). She also completed a two-year certificate program in university-level teaching there.

Dr. Sarma holds a bachelor’s in electronics and telecommunications from India and a master’s in project and program management from the SKEMA Business School in France.

She was a manager for Steel Authority of India Limited as well as an IT project manager for GE HealthCare in France before moving to the U.S. in 2012. She was an instructor at UMKC prior to moving to California to work at CSUB.

While Dr. Sarma was considering working at several universities across the country, she ultimately decided to accept a position at CSUB because of the diversity of the population and the positive interactions she had with some of the university’s staff during the application process.

“I came to visit the campus in 2017 and I really liked the place,” she said. “I was struck by the diversity of students in the classroom, which was very different from the traditional white, mostly male (population) back at UMKC. I found more people who looked like me, which made me feel more at home and at ease. I’m very proud to be a member of this wonderful CSUB family.”

Dr. Sarma decided to apply for the fellowship because she felt her previous education and work experience would be a good fit. She already teaches elements of social entrepreneurship in her classes at CSUB, but even before that, she took a course and published papers relating to social entrepreneurship while pursuing her Ph.D.

“This area of study interests me a lot and I felt I had real-world experience and some amount of research expertise,” Dr. Sarma said.

Student engagement and awareness will be a major focus of the fellowship, according to Dr. Sarma. She hopes that through the course materials and lesson plans she develops, students interested in business will become more aware of the importance of operating a business that is not only financially successful but also uses part of that wealth to better society.

“The current generation of students want to find meaning in their work,” Dr. Sarma said. “As the faculty fellow, I will strive to create awareness across campus and help our CSUB students find that meaning by emphasizing the need for more social entrepreneurs to find solutions to societal and environmental problems and make our community a better place to live in.”