Dr. Rahul Bedi is the System Associate Chair, Department of Management, for all eight campuses in New York and New Jersey. At the college, he has led or served on various committees including Academic Service Learning, Strategic Plan, Middle States Accreditation, Curriculum Design, Global Studies, Online Education, Career Management, Study Abroad, Internships and Program Assessment.  Dr. Bedi is founding partner of 20/20 Global Advisors, a New York-based consulting group, and has served as consultant to the United Nations and advised the Governments of Russia and Abkhazia on revitalization of their tea industry. Bedi is Vice President of the India-America Chamber of Commerce and is on the Board of International Consortium of Coaching in Organizations (ICCO).

Dr. Darshan Desai is Professor of Management at Berkeley College, New York. She has a combination of teaching, research and professional experiences. She received her MBA from Gujarat University and PhD in Business Management from Nirma University, India.  She has taught a wide array of undergraduate and MBA courses in United States and in India. Her research has been published in reputed international journals. Prior to her PhD, she had been involved in bringing change in the remote villages of India as a project leader for a Netherlands funded drinking water supply project.

Despite the existence of a range of integration opportunities, a dominant perspective in higher education suggests that teaching, research and professional services often clash and or fail to connect in the student and faculty experiences. We describe an approach – inquiry based service learning – that facilitates integration of teaching, research, and consulting through engaging all three important stakeholders (instructor, students, and community NGOs) services towards the common goal of solving the real life problems/issues faced by community partners.  We present examples and potential applications of this approach in a variety of contexts.