Friday, February 26, 2010

Operations Students as Models


I always say that I have the best students! I teach at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst and one needs to be very flexible as an academic because one never knows what "opportunities" cross one's path on any given day.

For example, as part of a development effort, I was asked to gather a group of my students for a photoshoot, which took place today and took over an hour. It was a new experience for my undergraduates, all seniors, which took part (but not for me), and they graciously gave up part of their Friday morning (during midterm time) to be photographed with me.

Afterwards (I like to schedule such opportunities/events efficiently), a group of us (we were all nicely dressed for the photoshoot) took part in a videotaping in my research lab, the Supernetworks Lab for Computation and Visualization, which is part of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks, that I direct. My research team was selected to be part of a video that will be entered into a competition. This was another "good cause," so I obliged.

As one of my undergrads today said, after we were photographed, numerous times, "if we don't get a job in business, we can always be models." My students are already model students and now they are even models!

Above are some photos that I took this morning -- before even any of the official ones get processed.