The Operations and Information Management Major at the Isenberg School -- Why It Delivers

Since this is a blog about research, education, networks, and the world, I periodically write about exciting majors and curriculum issues.

College programs and areas of study must be continuously updated as a means of both energizing the course content and materials, and faculty and students alike.

Change may be hard but is a primary means of growth and dynamism. When it comes to education, growth in terms of new ideas, new modes of teaching and learning, and the inclusion of new topics and courses is essential.

I am passionate about the courses that I teach and the research that I do and am so grateful for the intellectual and personal rewards that being a faculty member bring. Life is never boring and no two days are ever alike!

At the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst, I have been heavily involved in teaching at the undergraduate level in the Operations Management program and at the doctoral level in the Management Science program. These are housed in the Department of Finance and Operations Management (yes, we are the quant/techie types).

There is some very good news to report -- soon the official title of our undergrad major will be Operations and Information Management. We added several faculty in the information management area (always take advantage of arguing your case for new faculty slots and this was made possible through a proposal I co-wrote) and we hope to add more soon. We are also hiring faculty in the Operations Management/Management Science area.

The Chair of our department, as well as the faculty, have done a terrific job adding courses and, through the Career Center at the Isenberg School, our students have had wonderful internship opportunities and job placements. The list of offered courses in the new official major includes: Supply Chain Management, Introduction to Management Science, Enterprise Resource Planning, Business Intelligence, Logistics and Transportation, Business Process Simulation, Business Process Optimization, Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare, and Sustainable Systems.

The curriculum includes courses that satisfy the Information Technology Minor at UMass Amherst.

And, to whet your appetite further (it may make you want to be an undergraduate again): The internships and job placements of our students have included some of my favorite companies:

Consulting & Technology: Grant Thornton, IBM, and SAP

Manufacturing & Supply Chains: BOEING, Pratt & Whitney, UPS, Fedex, United Technologies Corporation, Bose, Avery Dennison, SABIC Innovative Plastics.

Retail Distribution: Macy’s, Frito Lay, C&S, Target, Staples, Kohl’s Department Stores, Lowe’s, Pepsi Bottling Group, Toys R Us

Financial Services: Hanover, Liberty Mutual, The Hartford, and Mass Mutual.

University Press Release on Our Blood Supply Chain Research

The University of Massachusetts Amherst has issued a nice press release on our research on blood supply chains.

It is really exciting when theory, modeling, and computations all come together synergistically to contribute to an application that can help humanity.

It is also special when the research is done with students who are passionate about the topic.

The press release: UMass Researchers Seek Improvement in Blood Supply Chain.

Blood is a critical life-saving product that is frequently in scarce supply. Blood service operations are also a key component of the health care system all over the world. The U.S. averages 38,000 blood donations daily, but the supply is frequently two days away from running out. Blood is also perishable and estimates are that 8 percent becomes outdated and goes to waste.

Blood supplies are used in activities other than life-saving emergency care, and have an impact on whether hospitals can perform elective surgery and other non life-threatening procedures. The cost of each unit of blood has also been increasing in recent years, a factor in overall health care costs.

We built a model for a regionalized blood banking system consisting of collection sites, testing and processing facilities, storage facilities, distribution centers, as well as points of demand, which include hospitals.

The paper that describes the modeling and computational framework, co-authored with my doctoral students, Amir H. Masoumi and Min Yu, Supply Chain Network Operations Management of a Blood Banking System with Cost and Risk Minimization, will appear in Computational Management Science.

So Proud of Our Isenberg School of Management Students!

The students at Isenberg continue to impress me by their manners (they will open the door to our nice building and hold it open for me until I pass through); they greet faculty warmly, and their work ethic is amazing (just stop by our stunning atrium any time of day or evening or even on a weekend to see their concentration whether on individual tasks or working collectively on group projects). Our students are creative, take heavy courseloads with very challenging courses, and still manage to engage in worthwhile extracurricular activities with many of them also holding part-time jobs.

Since I teach in our Operations Management undergraduate major program and the Management Science PhD program, I continue to be so proud of our students' accomplishments while at Isenberg and after they graduate. Our students have assumed executive positions in leading companies, have gone on to receive MBAs from Harvard and PhDs from MIT as well as UMass Amherst and other top universities, and have accomplished so much. Plus, our students are interesting and such a pleasure to teach and to interact with both inside and outside of the classroom.

The Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst is a gem where multidisciplinarity in terms of research and teaching is the norm. The school regularly makes Princeton Review's Best Place for Women top 5 rankings so female students feel comfortable here. There is also value placed on diversity and inclusion and I hope that a positive and supportive atmosphere continues.

One of the highlights, for me, of the academic year, is the reaching of milestones, and I am very much looking forward to the graduation ceremonies in May!

Speaking of milestones, yesterday one of our PhD students in Management Science, who matriculated when I was the Area Coordinator, defended her doctoral dissertation (successfully) so now Ms. Ahn Nguyen, who was born in Vietnam, and was a "boat person," became a US citizen, will be Dr. Ahn Nguyen! Her doctoral dissertation on continuous improvement in Vietnam, with much fieldwork in Vietnam, highlighted the challenges faced by that emerging economy (and also the opportunities). Plus, she has secured a faculty position in Operations Management in the San Francisco Bay area.

The receipt of a PhD takes time, incredible concentration, original, creative thinking, and hard work, coupled with assistance and mentorship of the faculty. A new PhD, who becomes a faculty member, can then, in turn, educate and mentor future generations so the investment in time and effort by all concerned (as well as the personal sacrifices) very often (but, of course, this may be discipline-dependent) pays off, hopefully, both in the relatively short run and in the long run.

The joy associated with research and knowledge discovery is its own incredible reward! Those who go on with their PhDs to work in government or coporations or even non-profits or foundations, come packed with a skill set and discipline plus knowledge that are very valuable in organizations. Some may even become entrepreneurs (all successful academics are entrepreneurs or we wouldn't survive in academia, much less, thrive, especially in these uncertain and dynamic times).

Also, yesterday, the announcement went out that one of my doctoral students in Management Science, Ms. Min Yu, will be defending her dissertation proposal at the end of this month. Her dissertation title: "Analysis, Design and Management of Supply Chain Networks for Time-Sensitive Products." Min already has several papers in various publication stages and is teaching a required undergrad course this semester, while serving as the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter's webmaster and was the President of this award-winning student chapter last year.

As a colleague of mine at the University of Florida, Distinguished University Professor Panos M. Pardalos, says, one needs to recognize where one started to measure success. Clearly, those who have been born with silver spoons in their mouths may have it easier but it is the trajectory of your life and accomplishments that matter (and remember the "initial conditions" of where you started from).

Our students, some of whom are the first in their families to receive a college education, are clearly successes by this measure!

Businessweek Recognizes Our Outstanding Operations Management Major at the Isenberg School

Businessweek has now recognized the Operations Management (OM) program/major at the Isenberg School at UMass Amherst as one of the top programs in this specialty for 2010!

Click here for the full list of OM program rankings for 2010.

To make it to the top 25 (actually, we are number 21) speaks to the excellence of the education that our students are receiving.

But education is a two-way street, and the students that our major attracts are amazing and a joy and a privilege to teach.

Background on the determination of the Businessweek rankings in OM and other business specialties is available here.

Our students benefit from a rigorous core curriculum in business and take foundational courses in Management Science, Operations Management, and Quality Management. They select electives in such topics as: Transportation & Logistics (which I teach), Supply Chain Management, Simulation, Forecasting, Business Process Optimization, and Advanced Operations Management.

With recent faculty hires, we are even offering a course in Cybertechnology!

As for what our recent graduates are doing now?! Some are working in exciting startups, others in established well-known retail companies and high-tech companies, while others have positions in logistics and even in government and in the military.

Several of our OM majors have worked for prominent consulting firms and have gone on to receive their MBAs from Harvard or a PhD from MIT.

No matter where their life journeys take them, the critical thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills that our Operations Management majors acquire, coupled with excellent communication and writing skills, will serve them well. Plus, with the variety of student clubs that we have at the Isenberg School, there are numerous opportunities for our students to assume leadership and officer positions, to travel and to live abroad, to take on wonderful internships, and to engage themselves in community service projects.

Thank you, Businessweek, for recognizing our truly terrific Operations Management program at the Isenberg School!

News Highlights from the Isenberg School -- Business Schools and Research

The intellectual life of a university depends on the research of its faculty and the give and take with students through teaching and scholarship.

I teach and conduct research at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst, which values interdisciplinarity. The academic departments at Isenberg clearly reflect this from my own department, Finance and Operations Management, to Resource Economics, Sport Management, and Hospitality and Tourism Management, plus even the more, shall I say, "classical" departments of Management, Marketing, and Accounting and Information Systems.

My department, in the last two years, has recruited two new Assistant Professors, Dr. Ahmed Ghoniem and Dr. Senay Solak, from Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech, respectively. Their work has already earned not only accolades but grants: Dr. Ghoniem has received funding from the Qatar National Research Fund to study how to minimize air traffic congestion whereas Dr. Solak has received funding from NSF to conduct research on housing foreclosures and nonprofit organizations.

Last year, we recruited the new Dean of the Isenberg School, Dr. Mark Fuller, whose appointment is also in my department (and, yes, I served on the search committees for all these hires, and chaired those of the two above).

Also, based on a proposal for a cluster hire that I, with colleagues in Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and even Communications, was involved in, we were able to recruit for a position in cyber security. Dr. Traci Hess and her husband, Dr. John Wells, both from Washington State University, will be joining my department this Fall as Associate Professors.

My colleagues conduct research on hedge funds, serve on FDA panels on food safety and risk, explore issues of privacy and marketing, to highlight only a few, very cool research topics.

My own research and passion is heavily focused on networks, especially on complex networks with applications as varied as supply chains, humanitarian logistics, financial networks, electric power generation, and transportation. My recent research has emphasized network design and fragility and vulnerability analysis with applications to critical needs and healthcare products from vaccines to medicines as well as sustainability.

Being in a business school, one can conduct research on the latest topics and this brings an energy and enthusiasm to the classroom which are palpable. Being trained in operations research and management science (my advisor at Brown University, Dr. Stella Dafermos, was the only female at that time in Engineering and Applied Math) one has the skill set to address many important problems.

Although campuses will be teaming with students, both new and experienced ones, come the Fall, during the summer, the faculty are getting prepared as they work on new breakthroughs, present their work at conferences around the globe, rework their course materials, and take the time to reflect.

Soon I will be giving keynote talks in Europe -- at the Computational Management Science in Vienna, Austria and at the Yalta Optimization Conference -- Network Science in Ukraine. As I tell my students, research can really take you places and introduce you to fascinating people!

Working at a university is a great privilege and responsibility and always filled with new challenges, opportunities, and, sometimes, even drama (I will write about the latter topic sometime in the future)!

Graduation Time -- Let Them Fly on Their Own Wings

This time of year is when many college graduations and associated events and festivities take place.

Yesterday, UMass Amherst awarded graduate degrees at the Mullins Center and we had a nice group from the Isenberg School officially receiving their PhD degrees.

Today, on a simply gorgeous spring day, undergraduate degrees will be awarded at a joint campus event, which will be followed by individual school events, including one at the Isenberg School of Management. I am looking forward to seeing my Operations Management students graduate! They have all worked very hard and have had the advantage of a challenging curriculum with great professors. Our students are a delight to teach.

The undergraduate commencement speaker will be Sheila Bair, the Chairwoman of the FDIC, who is officially on leave from my department (Finance and Operations Management at the Isenberg School of Management), where she had a faculty appointment for a few years. UMass Amherst issued a nice press release on her being back to speak at commencement.

She, along with Mary Schapiro and Elizabeth Warren, are featured on the latest cover of Time Magazine, with an accompanying article, The New Sheriffs of Wall Street. In the article, former Senator Bob Dole, who was her mentor, is quoted as saying that Sheila "was available 24/7." In addition, he is quoted as saying: As my wife will tell you, more is expected of women. Dole, in 1990, encouraged Sheila to run for an open House seat in Kansas. She ran as a pro-choice Republican and lost narrowly. Senator Dole told me the reason I lost was because I was a woman and I was unmarried, Bair recalled last year, on accepting the Profiles in Courage Award at Harvard University. That made me all the more determined to take on new challenges. Sheila is now married and has two children, including an adopted daughter. She still very much enjoys coming back to Amherst (which, I must say is primarily Democratic).

I agree with Dole's statement that, more is expected of women; nevertheless, we can still be major instruments of change, whether through government, scientific research and discoveries, business, engineering, medicine and healthcare, creative arts, media, and/or education, or, however, we and our family members and students, decide to fly on our own wings.

So, congratulations to all of this year's college graduates!