Investing in Our Students: Donating a Scholarship

When I was appointed the John F. Smith Memorial Professor of Operations Management at the Isenberg School in 1998, becoming the first female to hold a chaired professorship in the UMass system, I thought of ways that I could give back.

With the enthusiastic support of my husband, we decided to establish a scholarship for Operations Management undergraduate students in the Isenberg School. After years of donations, 5 years ago, delightfully, when I was a Visiting Professor at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, I heard from one of Isenberg's former development officers, Bonnie Dowd, that there were sufficient funds to give out a scholarship, called The Nagurney Scholarship.

The former Dean, Dr. Thomas O'Brien, helped in setting up the original account and figuring out the payments to make this scholarship realizable and for this we are very grateful.

I am very pleased that we have now have had 4 Nagurney Scholarship recipients. The scholarship focuses on students who have interests in Transportation and Logistics and a committee (which I cannot be part of since I am the donor) decides who will get the scholarship.

Today, I was so happy to have the most recent recipient stop by during my office hours after I taught (and thoroughly enjoyed) my Transportation and Logistics class so we took the photo below.

It was great to catch up and she shared with me the fabulous news that she had secured an offer from a  leading consulting firm in Boston! Prevous Nagurney Scholarship recipients, all Operations and Information Management majors at the Isenberg School, have gone on to positions at top services and manufacturing firms.

The first Nagurney Scholarship recipient was honored, along with other scholarship recipients, at a lovely, special event in the spring of 2014 that I had blogged about. The photo below was taken at that event and joining me are his mother and our great Isenberg School Dean Dr. Mark A. Fuller.

In 2015 the scholarship celebration was moved to UMass Amherst.

Scholarships help tremendously in supporting deserving students so that they can focus on their academic work. The Thank You notes from the scholarship recipients I treasure.

For a full list of scholarships at the Isenberg School click here.

As a Professor I am proud that the Nagurney Scholarship, my teaching, publications,  and supervision of doctoral students are key parts of my legacy. The undergraduate scholarship also signifies the importance of undergraduate students to my work at the Isenberg School and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

An Academic Departmental Divorce

You may be expecting me to be writing about math models, algorithms, and love since tomorrow is Valentine's Day but, given Professor Laura McLay's post on such a topic, I am writing on another one -- that of the breakup of my department into two separate departments.

This divorce did not need a judge or court or lawyers, but it needed the Faculty Senate and, on January 31, 2013, the separation of my department at the Isenberg School of Management was made official according to this document.  So, now we have not a single department housing what I always liked to think of as the real techies in our business school but two separate departments: the Department of Finance and the Department of Operations and Information Management. The day to day rhythms should not change much and we still will have the same wonderful secretary.

So, now it will be time for new business cards, new stationery, new updates to the cv's, and various websites, as well as new signs around the school, etc.

I am very pleased that our undergraduates will now have separate majors upon graduation with their degrees (having a major in Finance and Operations Management was confusing to some employers). The doctoral track remains Management Science for "our" department.


Nevertheless, I will miss having stronger ties with the Finance faculty but the friendships remain as well as the collaborations, whether through grants, research, and/or even serving on students' doctoral dissertation committees. And I will continue to work on Financial Networks, which is the theme even of a special issue of the journal, Computational Management Science, that I am guest editing.

This department was originally called General Business and Finance. Then it was changed to Finance and Operations Management, which evolved to Finance and Operations and Information Management (the latter only for a very short period) and now to two separate departments.I served on the search committee with some truly terrific colleagues for our new Dean, who was hired over 3 years ago, Dr. Mark Fuller, who is in the MIS area

Then, with colleagues from Computer Science, and Electrical and Computer Engineering, as well as a few other, I wrote a proposal for new faculty in the area of cybersecurity and our department got a new faculty slot, and we ended up also getting a spousal hire, as well, so the non-Finance part grew.  It made sense to then add "Information Management."

Amazingly, the proposal that we wrote for a cybersecurity cluster hire is still online.

Change happens in academia, albeit slowly, but change is good.

We are now in the midst of interviewing faculty candidates so these are exciting times.

Happy Valentine's Day!