CENTER VALLEY, Pa. — Subhadra “Su” Ganguli spent a decade in the Middle East as a corporate trainer in the banking and financial services sector. This position allowed her to combine her two passions — economics and career readiness. Now, she has started her next professional chapter at Penn State Lehigh Valley as an assistant teaching professor of business.
According to Ganguli, her undergraduate experience at Presidency College, one of the top universities for economics in India, set her on the path for a global career in the field, though ultimately she wanted to find her own direction.
“I was never interested in working for a company, per se, but I wanted to do a universal service in the field of economics,” she said. “I was fascinated by the field when I was in college and very influenced by my professors. [Economics] can change lives — that’s how important this profession can be in terms of how you can influence a country at a broad level or influence education. We were very inspired by our professors to go above and beyond the corporate sector.”
Corporate training was a way to use her economics background to help the future workforce develop critical skill sets, she said.
Ganguli left consulting for academia but has found ways to blend the two. Drawing on her prior career, she said she finds opportunities to use classroom material in real-life applications wherever she can. This fall, she said she will use the same techniques in her courses.
“Career readiness lies at the root of everything I am doing currently,” she said.
Just as she spent a decade equipping Bahraini employees for the skills needed to work in banking and finance, she said she expects to equip her students at PSU-LV with the skills and tools they need to make their own professional impact. She stressed learning does not stop at receiving a diploma or degree.
“As you enter a job, you keep learning,” she said. “Education should not only make you career-ready — you should continue learning throughout your life.”
When Ganguli relocated to the United States from the Middle East in 2018, she said she immediately recognized a gap between higher education and workforce readiness and made it her mission to narrow that gap for her students.
“I wanted to make my teaching applicable to the real world, so I developed very application-oriented projects — something the students can build upon over the 16 weeks of the course,” she said. “The students add whatever they are learning into the project — at the end of the semester, the students apply everything they have learned to a project they would like to work on, a business they want to set up, or a loophole they want to fix.”
Ganguli also said she uses benchmarking information provided by the National Association of Colleges and Employers to develop a self-reflective question related to the skills the students developed throughout the semester.
“It blends career and self-development, communication skills and technology,” Ganguli said. “Not only does this project bring me joy, but it helps me think about how I can do things better.”
Rather than focus solely on the hard data aspect of an economics major, Ganguli said students would be better served to diversify their skill sets to compete in today’s job market.
There is a demand for economics majors because the field is so broad and touches so many different industries, Ganguli said, but she suggested specializing in one or two areas to stand out from other applicants.
“Everything is data-driven, so the economics major would add tremendous power to anyone’s job search,” she said. “In my opinion, economics is everywhere. In academia, research is tremendously important. There is also a huge scarcity of high school economics teachers. In the private sector, economists can do important work with consulting. There is a huge emphasis on infrastructure, and the cost/benefit analysis of new infrastructure projects.”
She advised students to build upon their foundation by acquiring at least a working knowledge of artificial intelligence (AI) and computer programming for data-driven economics areas.
“Have some basic knowledge and the ability to handle some amount of data,” she said. “Start learning AI in some of your courses if you can. All jobs use AI in some form. If you have that type of experience, it will definitely set you apart.”
She offered one standout bit of advice: economics can blend and apply in several fields..
“If you want to get into research, that’s fantastic,” she said. “If you want to work somewhere, find another specialty. If you want to work for a marketing firm, for instance, have some product knowledge and know where you want to contribute. Economics meshes with almost everything, which can be a good and bad thing.”
And, Ganguli explained, she is already noticing some workforce trends students can expect to encounter when applying for jobs or internships.
“The crux of everything that will happen for these students is working in teams, so the more teamwork students can do, the better,” Ganguli said. “The more we are moving toward machine learning, the more there is a need for emotional intelligence, team building and collaboration on projects. These are extremely critical to what we are thinking for future jobs.”