Meet Dr. Dron M. Mandhana!

Title: The Importance of Research and Positivity

Subtitle: An Interview with Dr. Dron M. Mandhana

Authors: Cameron Pickoski and Christian D’Angelo

Article: Professor, Engineer, Salesman; Dr. Dron Mandhana does it all. 

Dr. Mandhana in front of Garey Hall

Dron Mandhana, PhD, Assistant Professor, Communication, grew up in the small town of Yavatmal, India where he first worked in the family business selling saris, while pursuing his undergraduate degree in Electronics and Telecommunication engineering. From a young age, Dr. Mandhana developed the diverse skills he cites as an integral part of his professional career and success today, setting him apart as both a multi-faceted employee and educator. 

An adaptive person, Dr. Mandhana has consistently faced change head on with his penchant positive attitude. Completing his engineering degree in 2008, Dr. Mandhana initially struggled to find a job in the field due to the recession at the time. Putting his engineering career on hold, he started teaching GRE and GMAT for the Princeton Review, India. Additionally, he began working as a Visiting Professor and taught Business Communication at a nearby college. Finding that his strengths lie in organizational communication, a topic not popularly studied in India, Dr. Mandhana came to the US to pursue his master’s degree at Michigan State University. As a proud Spartan, Dr. Mandhana graduated in 2014 and went on to pursue his PhD at the University of Texas at Austin. 

At the University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Mandhana became interested in studying unplanned interactions of employees in the workplace. Planting recording devices on employees and observing the results would naturally have been frowned upon for privacy reasons, so he was challenged to find a different way. The nature of the study was unique in that it focused on spur of the moment conversations that could not be replicated in an experiment. The same organic quality that made them of interest to researchers like Dr. Mandhana was exactly what made it difficult to properly observe. Faced with the challenge of studying day-to-day, unplanned employee interactions without disregarding their right to privacy, Dr. Mandhana developed a mobile app that would detect when employees were in the same vicinity. The application would then prompt them to fill out a brief survey about their interaction once it detected they had distanced themselves from each other. With this app, Dr. Mandhana was able to detect 14,000 unplanned conversations and receive over 1,000 survey responses. Through this, he determined that the more unplanned conversations co-workers had, the greater their coordination and performance. 

Amidst an impressive research career, Dr. Mandhana moved into the educational sphere. He is now an Assistant professor at Villanova University in the Communication department. He cites the faculty’s dedication to not only higher education, but also service as one of his deciding factors in coming to the school. Dr. Mandhana believes that “as communication scholars, it is our responsibility to give back to the community,” and he sees these values reflected at Villanova. He also commented on Villanova students’ drive and ability, but also shared with us the distinct need he feels to emphasize the importance of diversity in his classroom. He believes that the small class sizes at Villanova allows him to connect more personally with each student and hopes to show them ways to interact with people that come from different places, backgrounds, and experiences. 

Dr. Mandhana is genuinely invested in his students’ futures. His advice for communication graduates entering the job market is: “Keep your ego on the side because rejections are imminent. Just enjoy the process.” Dr. Mandhana offers a fresh perspective for interviews and applications—a topic that fills most undergraduate students with dread. He advises, “do not see them as requirements, but as something to be done with excitement and commitment.” With such a positive outlook and admirable work ethic, it is easy to see why Dr. Mandhana is already a student favorite in the Villanova Communication department. 

Pull Quotes

“as communication scholars, it is our responsibility to give back to the community”

 "keep your ego on the side and enjoy the process.”

“do not see them as requirements, but as something to be done with excitement and commitment.”

Dr. Mandhana in the classroom and engaging students with lecture material.

Office space where Dr. Mandhana conducted his research on unplanned conversations between co-workers.