Sharing Successes and Thanks with Your Benefactor

I have been very lucky to not only have met the benefactor of my chaired professorship but to also have enough of a relationship with him that I can communicate and share experiences with him.

In 1998, I became the John F. Smith Memorial Professor at Operations Management at the Isenberg School of Management. I was the first female appointed to a chaired professorship in the University of Massachusetts system, consisting of 5 campuses, including the UMass Medical School in Worcester.

Part of having a chaired professorship, I believe, is stewardship, and that should entail not only, according to its definition, of:  responsible planning and management of resources, but also staying in touch with the benefactor/donor, if that is at all possible. The chaired professorship that I hold was made possible by John F. Smith Jr. or "Jack Smith," an alumnus of the Isenberg School of Management, class of 1960, who endowed the professorship in honor of his father, who was also a UMass Amherst alumnus, but of its Stockbridge School. Jack Smith Jr. was the chairman of the board of General Motors from 1996 to 2003 and the CEO from 1992 to 2000.  He has been a member of Delta's Board of Directors since 2000, so, clearly, transportation is in his "blood" and we have a common passion for operations management. What has always impressed me about Jack Smith, is his incredible intellect and memory as well as ideas for innovation.

Yesterday, I shipped off a package to Jack Smith, with two letters, one detailing some of the accomplishments of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks, that I founded and have directed since 2001, and our great students at the Isenberg School, and a holiday letter. I also enclosed in the package three books: Competing on Supply Chain Quality, co-authored with my former PhD student, Dr. Dong "Michelle" Li, Dynamics of Disasters: Key Concepts, Models, Algorithms, and Insights, co-edited with Professors Ilias S. Kotsireas and Panos M. Pardalos, and STEM Gems,  by Stephanie Espy, in which I was honored to be one of 44 inspiring female role models in STEM for my work on networks. All these books were published in 2016 so they should make for some pleasant holiday reading.

Jack Smith has come back to UMass and the Isenberg School on several occasions, since I became a chaired professor,  and we also have a classroom named in his honor. He, along with other luminaries, such as Ken Feinberg and Jack Welch, also UMass Amherst alums, serves as an honorary co-chair of the UMass Rising Campaign. A video for the campaign, in which I also speak, can be accessed here.

In fact, one of the seeds for supernetworks and our center germinated when Jack gave a talk at UMass and spoke about interfaces between telecommunications and transportation in the context of vehicle mobility and it was clear that networks of networks or supernetworks would be an area that would generate theory and applications for years to come, which it has! Our Supernetworks book, which I co-authored with Dr. June Dong was published in 2002.

Below are some photos taken on one of Jack's visits to the Isenberg School, when he visited the Supernetworks Lab. Many of the Center Associates featured in the photos, have since received their PhDs, and are now professors. Several, who were undergraduates then, such as David Soffer and Christina Calvaneso, are having fascinating professional careers in business.  A full list is available here.

This blogpost is also a thank you to Jack Smith, whose support has enabled us to have a thriving, award-winning  UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter, a center that builds bridges and has collaborators from multiple continents, and a home where speakers and visitors always feel a warm welcome.

Academic Promotion Letter Writing Season

This morning I sent off my 6th (and final) letter of the season evaluating a promotion case. In my dreams I had been ruminating about it throughout the night and, when I woke up, the language just flowed. It was a promotion to Full Professor case. A Full Professor is the highest rank in academia, outside of a Distinguished Professor or Chaired Professor rank, which are tops (I hold a Chaired Professorship and am very honored by this recognition).

I already received an acknowledgment that my letter was received  so I have a sense of accomplishment and I hope that the case goes positive up the academic hierarchy.

For my readers who are not in academia, typically, in the mid to late Summer and early Fall letter writers are solicited by Department Chairs or, sometimes, Deans, from academics outside of the candidate's home college or university. When its is a matter of promotion from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor with tenure (which means, essentially, job security for life), there may be as many as a dozen letters required to evaluate the candidate's accomplishments in research, teaching, and service, with the exact number depending on the college or university and, sometimes, even the candidate's department. Usually a candidate provides a list of names and the academic leadership identifies others; not all names on the list may be invited. Normally, the candidate is not informed who has been invited to evaluate his/her case.

Most universities have explicit rules (arms length rules), that state that the letter writer should not be a collaborator, have the same dissertation advisor as the candidate, or have some other close professional association.  

For promotion from Associate Professor to Full Professor, I know that, in my very own case, 13 letters were received. Sometimes more invitations are sent out since some invitations to write are declined. It is an important task, time-consuming, and comes without any compensation. Although, I must admit, that, last year, for a "habilitation" case in France, for which the candidate had requested a letter from me and I had accepted to write one, I received a cake in the mail, which was delicious (and he did get his habilitation, which is actually like a higher elevation than a PhD and is valued in several countries). I also wrote a letter for him last month for his Full Professorship and his promotion was already approved.


The request for a letter of evaluation, once accepted, usually comes with a file of the candidate's cv (a resume in academia), the candidate's personal statement, and copies of several publications.

As a Chaired Full Professor,  I get my share of requests to do promotion evaluations and have done them for faculty candidates in Business Schools, Engineering Schools but also in Math or Math Science Departments. Although my primary appointment is in a business school, I hold courtesy appointments in two engineering departments at UMass Amherst and my PhD is in Applied Math, with a concentration in Operations Research.

What I find rather surprising lately, is that, in several cases, I was asked to provide a letter of evaluation in less than a month. In previous years, usually a 2 month time window would be standard.

The past few weeks, I have evaluated 4 Full Professor cases, 1 promotion and tenure case, and 1 promotion to Distinguished Professor case in England.

Once the evaluation letters are received, depending on the university, there are usually multiple levels of voting that take place by Personnel Committees at the department, school (such as business or engineering school, depending where the faculty member's home base is), by the Dean, and the university level, by the Provost, and upwards to the President and/or Board of Trustees. Faculty who are up for promotion and tenure are necessarily anxious because there have been cases where the case went positive through the Dean's level, only to be overturned at the Provost's level. Faculty may then appeal but not often are appeals successful. Essentially, if denied tenure, one may get a year's reprieve but then must find another job. In the case of a denial of a promotion to Full Professor, once can try again (and again, if need be). To achieve a Full Professorship within 10 years of receiving one's PhD is considered excellent.

It is very interesting to see that certain universities in requesting a letter of evaluation will spell out in detail what a candidate should be evaluated on; some even note citations on Google Scholar as being important and major awards and recognitions received, whereas other don't provide much guidance.

A few years ago I received a telephone call from a Department Chairman saying that a letter writer was hospitalized and could I take over, which, I did, since I knew the candidate and could write a solid letter.

I presently serve on the Personnel Committee of the Isenberg School of Management, and have also served on this committee in the past and it is interesting to see letters evaluating candidates in different areas of business and management, from my own area of Operations Management and Management Science, to Finance, Accounting, and Marketing, and even Organizational Behavior and Strategy, and Hospitality and Tourism Management as well as Sports Management. Of course, the representative from the candidate's department is the one that has to argue the case before us because of familiarity with the area.

And when you hear that a strong positive letter that you wrote had the desired outcome, congratulations are in order!

Luckily, I have done all of my external case evaluations for tis promotions season but, the "letter writing" does not end for a faculty member, since we also write letters of recommendation for our students who are seeking excellent jobs - our undergraduates and MBAs in industry and our PhD students, primarily, in academia. And then there are those letters of nomination for colleagues and students for various awards and recognitions!  I am glad that I had such fabulous English teachers both in elementary school and in high school and, I must admit, I do love to write!

Endowed Professorships at the Isenberg School of Management

Today (yes, it is a Sunday of the Labor Day weekend), we heard the good news from our Dean, Dr. Mark Fuller, via en email message, that two of our faculty have been appointed to Endowed Chaired Professorships. Specifically, Hossein B. Kazemi, a professor of finance at Isenberg, is the new Michael and Cheryl Philipp Professor of Finance.  Kazemi is actually the second holder of the Philipp Professorship - Professor Tom Schneeweis, who recently retired, was the first and assumed it in 2000.

                                   Dr. Hossein Kazemi

Professor Chris Agoglia, who is the chair of our Accounting Department  is the inaugural Richard Simpson Endowed Professor in accounting. This chair honors the legendary Simpson, who taught at our school for 50 years retiring at about age 80. I wrote about Professor Simpson on this blog in a piece entitled, Business Profs Who Make a Difference.

Dr. Chris Agoglia

Kazemi received his PhD from the University of Michigan and is also the Director of CISDM. Agoglia received his PhD from UMass Amherst.  

There are now 7 faculty holding endowed chairs at the Isenberg School of Management so this page will have to be updated!  Our Dean holds the Thomas O'Brien Endowed Chair, named after our long-serving former dean, who because of his outstanding efforts, we have the "Isenberg" School of Management. The Management department has 3 endowed chairs:  Professor Steven Floyd is the Eugene M. Isenberg Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship; Professor Charles Manz is the Nirenberg Professor of Leadership, and James Theroux  is the Flavin Family Chair in Entrepreneurshi.

I hold the John F. Smith Memorial Professorship of Operations Management and have held this chaired professorship since 1998. It is in honor of the father of Jack Smith Jr., '60, the former CEO of General Motors, who endowed this chair, and is one of our alums. Just last week, I wrote a long letter to Jack Smith thanking him for his support and telling him of the fabulous year at the Isenberg School - especially of the happenings in our new Operations & Information Management department and the Virtual Center for Supernetworks that I founded in 2001 and direct. 

Named professorships come in all "shapes and sizes." There are endowed professorships, which, typically, last until one leaves, retires, or gets carried out. There are even what are sometimes called "folding chairs." These tend to be short-term honorific professorships and may have a set lifetime or be renewable with other holders. Some named professorships may be for only Assistant Professors but, typically, these are for Full Professors, the highest strata of the academic food pyramid.

In any event, please join me in congratulating both Professors Kazemi and Agoglia!

Our Dean in his message stated that:  Our most valuable resources are those individuals that can do it all at a high level: research, teach, serve, and lead; and who are firmly committed to all aspects of our mission including undergraduate and graduate education as well as scholarship.

UMass to Celebrate 150 Years and President Caret's Great OpEd on Its Mission

One needs to write and to communicate by speaking out.

As a professor and educator, I try to do my part by writing journal articles, books, and even OpEd pieces to reach a broader audience.

I also blog because many students and colleagues urged me to do so over three years ago.

And when the opportunity presents itself, and,  I am available, I enjoy talking with the media.

It is important to recognize what is going well, what needs improvement, and to celebrate when there are achievements and to propose solutions and take actions, where and when these are needed.

Books, as we know, can change the world, and will live longer than any of us -- the same holds for great discoveries and works of art and music.

Dr. Robert Caret, the relatively new President of the UMass system, wrote a wonderful OpEd,

 Viewpoint: UMass remains on mission 150 years later,  in which he states: Here in Massachusetts, the passage of the Morrill Land Grant Act led to the founding of the Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1863. The college, established on the principle that science and research could be used to improve the overall quality of life, was built around a curriculum of farming, science, technical courses and liberal arts.

Robert L. Caret (masslive.com)

What would become the University of Massachusetts has grown, but its original mission of transformation remains unchanged.

He goes on to note some of our recent successes, 150 years after,  with the Permaculture Garden, which was recognized even by President Obama,  to our Green High-Performance Computing Center.

He also  emphasized accessibility and affordability and, given the international competition of college admissions today and the student debt crisis, I could not agree more!

President Caret has traveled on a bus throughout our state of Massachusetts, meeting with many stakeholders.

Recently, I was interviewed by our new Vice Chancellor for University Relations, John Kennedy, about my experiences as a UMass Amherst chaired professor, the John F. Smith Memorial Professor. The videographers traveled from Boston for the videotaping and one of them was a UMass Amherst grad.  I must admit, though, that I thought it  rather funny when one of them kept on powdering my face, which I had never had happen in either TV shoots or other videotaping sessions. I guess that day I glowed too much (or was it because I had just flown back from Sweden 2 days prior where I had spent a month as part of my sabbatical). I was excited to talk about UMass Amherst and my experiences. I spoke about how many multiple generations of UMass graduates there are and how many of my students tell me that they were happiest when they were students at UMass Amherst -- and, amongst these I include, several top-level executives.

Of course, I also talked about what makes the Isenberg School of Management great.

I also noted Jack Smith, a former CEO of General Motors, who had endowed the chaired professorship that I hold in honor of his father who was also a UMass Amherst alum, from the Stockbridge School of Agriculture. Jack Smith Jr. had received a degree in Operations Management from my business school and is an outstanding example of the difference that UMass Amherst grads have made in the corporate arena.

Thank you, President Caret,  for speaking out about the heritage of UMass, which is alive today, and noting that: One hundred fifty years ago, during the darkest days of the Civil War, a single piece of legislation forever changed the landscape of higher education in the United States. Introduced by Vermont Congressman Justin Smith Morrill, it sought to create a national system of public higher education to ensure that a college degree would be available to many and not just be the province of a few.

Here in Massachusetts, the passage of the Morrill Land Grant Act led to the founding of the Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1863. 

And, indeed,  science and research should be used and is being used to improve the overall quality of life!