The Good News Keeps on Coming!

The life of an academic is never dull and what I especially enjoy is the good news that arrives!

Last night I heard from my 16th PhD student, Dr. Min Yu, who received her PhD from UMass Amherst in 2012, with a concentration in Management Science, that she had been awarded promotion to Associate Professor and tenure at the Pamplin School of Business at the University of Portland in beautiful Oregon. This is a big milestone and we are all thrilled for her! Dr. Yu was not only my PhD student (I have chaired 20 PhD dissertations to completion) but we continue to collaborate on a variety of supply chain network problems from food to sustainability. And just this past week, with a present doctoral student of mine, Deniz Besik, we completed a paper, "Dynamics of Quality as a Strategic Variable in Complex Food Supply Chain Network Competition: The Case of Fresh Produce," and submitted it to a special issue of a journal (and we met the deadline). This paper we will be presenting at the NEDSI conference in Providence, Rhode Island (I have a soft spot for this city since I have 4 degrees from Brown University) and it is beautiful there in April. Another doctoral student of mine, Pritha Dutta, will also present at this conference and the title of that paper is: "Supply Chain Network Competition Among Blood Service Organizations: A Generalized Nash Equilibrium Framework."

Last week I had the pleasure of being interviewed for a radio segment by Karen Brown: 'Critical' Blood Shortage Comes Down To Weather, Flu And Supply Chain, which aired on NEPR and several other state public radio stations. It is gratifying when research that one does can impact practice.

We received a contract from Springer to edit the volume: Dynamics of Disasters: Algorithmic Approaches and Applications, which is shaping up nicely with multiple papers now in the revised, accepted, or being reviewed stages. I am co-editing this volume (as I did the one published in 2016) with Professors Ilias S. Kotsireas and Panos M. Pardalos and my co-authors and I have revised our paper,  A Variational Equilibrium Network Framework for Humanitarian Organizations in Disaster Relief: Effective Product Delivery Under Competition for Financial Funds, Anna Nagurney, Patrizia Daniele, Emilio Alvarez Flores, Valeria Caruso, and it is now accepted.

This week we published the 2018 Winter edition of The Supernetwork Sentinel, which is the newsletter of the Supernetwork Center at the Isenberg School that I founded in 2001 and continue to direct. This newsletter, as well as all previous ones, can be downloaded here.

 
It is amazing, if I may say so, what the Supernetwork Team accomplished in the past few months and all the wonderful activities and events on the horizon!

This week we also heard that Dr. Burcu Balcik, renowned in humanitarian logistics, will be coming to speak in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series on March 30, and we are thrilled and delighted. Our first speaker will be Professor Hari Balasubramanian, who will speak on February 9, followed by Professor Jim Orlin of MIT on February 23, Dr. Les Servi on March 23, and Dr. Davit Khachatryan on April 20! On several of the "remaining" Fridays I will be giving talks at WPI, in Italy, Switzerland, and Wisconsin.

Plus, I am teaching my Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare class this semester and I am also hosting multiple Guest Speakers as Professor for a Day! Today, we had Mr. Jeff Hescock, who is the UMass Interim Executive Director of Environmental Health & Safety plus the Director of Emergency Management and Business Continuity, speak and he was amazing! Below is a photo taken after his lecture.

In this class will have also other guest speakers (the response to my invitations has been tremendous and I am so grateful) who have worked for (or are presently employed by) MEMA, BayStateHealth, Doctors without Borders, and UMass Amherst, and additional speakers on Disaster Communications and other topics.
 
And, this week, I was honored to again assume the position of being the PhD Coordinator for Management Science at the Isenberg School, a position that I held for over a decade. I thank my colleague, Professor Ahmed Ghoniem, for his excellent service in his capacity as the Coordinator for the past few years. Doctoral students are essential to the vibrancy and intellectual energy and productivity of a great research university such as UMass Amherst!

We have also been very busy working on a big proposal to the National Science Foundation on a truly exciting, multidisciplinary project and it is super to also be part of this team.

The Best Gifts for an Academic Mom on Mother's Day

I'd like to wish all mothers out there a very Happy Mother's Day and to acknowledge all those who are no longer with us.

It's been a truly fabulous week and I feel very lucky.

As the Director of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks, I have the privilege and honor of working with a great team of faculty, industrial partners, and students. This past Friday, I sent out the following message to my team.  All of those recognized in the message below were or are my PhD students in Management Science at the Isenberg School with the exception of my great collaborator Professor Daniele in Italy and the "other Professor Nagurney," who is my husband.

Also, the photo below is of Professor Patrick Qiang with his lovely family taken shortly after his receipt of Promotion & Tenure.

  
Dear Supernetwork Center Associates:

I wanted to share with you some of the wonderful news and my CONGRATULATIONS! The next Supernetwork newsletter will be packed with Kudos.

1. I just heard from Dr. Patrick Qiang that he received a letter from the President of the Penn State University system, stating that he has been granted a promotion to Associate Professor with tenure! Congratulations to Dr. Qiang! (Plus, at yesterday's commencement on his campus, he was honored with the Campus Teaching Award!)

2. Dong "Michelle" Li successfully defended her doctoral dissertation on May 4, and, after many campus interviews and frequent flier miles, accepted a great offer from the AACSB accredited School of Business at Arkansas State University. She follows in the footsteps of Professor Tina Wakolbinger (since Memphis is only an hour away) and Professor Ke Ke, whose first academic position was at the University of Arkansas in Monticello. Congrats to Dr. Li! (Michelle is my 18th PhD student to receive the PhD.)

3. Professor Jose M. Cruz has received the UCONN School of Business  Faculty Service/Outreach Excellence Award.  This award is presented annually to a faculty member for outstanding achievement in service/outreach. Jose has received 2 Ackerman Scholar awards and two teaching awards in previous years, so UCONN should just start naming their awards after him.

4. Professor Tina Wakolbinger of the Vienna University of Economics and Business has been appointed Senior Editor for the premier journal, Production and Operations Management, in the Disaster Management Department.

5. Sara Saberi received the Isenberg School's Outstanding Doctoral Student Researcher Award - she follows in the footsteps of Professor Min Yu of the University of Portland  and Dong Li. Also, Sara is today at the POMS doctoral colloquium in Washington DC.

6. Professor Patrizia Daniele has organized sessions for the EURO Glasgow conference and I will be seeing her there as well as Professors Wakolbinger and Toyasaki, who will also be coming to the Dynamics of Disasters Conference that I am co-organizing in Greece. Professor Wakolbinger organized a stream and a session at Glasgow and Professor Amir Masoumi of Manhattan College will be speaking in the session.

7. Dr. Padma Ramanujam of SAS came back to campus to speak at an invited panel at an ISSR conference at which Shivani Shukla also had a poster on our latest cybersecurity research (with Professor Patrizia Daniele and the other Professor Nagurney, who will be on sabbatical this coming academic year).

Happy Mother's Day to everyone and keep the great news coming! I am a very proud Academic Mom.

The great news items above represent the best gifts that I could get as an Academic Mom!


Anna Nagurney, Ph.D.
John F. Smith Memorial Professor
Director, Virtual Center for Supernetworks
Department of Operations and Information Management
Isenberg School of Management
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003

Building Your Networks Before Promotion and Tenure

This past year I was a very proud "Academic Mom" since not only did one of my doctoral students at the Isenberg School of Management receive her PhD and assume an Assistant Professor position (Dr. Min Yu is now at the Pamplin School of Business at the University of Portland in Oregon) but 3 former doctoral students received promotion and tenure -- Dr. Jose M. Cruz is now an Associate Professor at the School of Business at the University of Connecticut in Storrs and also an Ackerman Scholar, Dr. Fuminori Toyasaki is an Associate Professor in the School of Administrative Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada, and Dr. Ke "Grace" Ke is an Associate Professor at the College of Business at Central Washington University.in Ellensburg. 

Also, this year, another doctoral student of mine is on the job market and another former one is preparing his dossier for his promotion and tenure case. So, I have a lot of experience both placing doctoral students and also seeing them get promotions and tenure, which is wonderful! Tenure, for the non-academic readers, means that one has a job for life (unless there are some very rare circumstances or one gets into real trouble).

In academia, if one is in a "tenure-track" position and an Assistant Professor, one, typically, comes up for promotion to Associate Professor with tenure in the sixth year. The packet that one prepares has to include research contributions, teaching contributions, and also, usually, service ones.

When it comes to the evaluation of research, outside letters are solicited from those who are deemed knowledgeable to be able to comment on the candidate's research. The person coming up for promotion and tenure is usually asked for a list of names and contact information and then other names are decided upon by the chairman and personnel committee (there may be variants of this process, but this is, more or less, the typical process).

The chairman may request as many as 8-10 names from the candidate.

Now, certain colleges and universities have quite stringent restrictions as to who may be on the list. This is why it is important to start building one's networks shortly after receiving the PhD and assuming the tenure-track Assistant Professor position.

Advisors (dissertation chairs) often are not allowed as outside letter writers and neither are your collaborators or often students who had the same advisor as you did. Oftentimes, one cannot have another faculty member as a letter writer from the same university and college system.  Of course, who knows you the best -- those that you have worked closely with (such as your dissertation advisor) and those that you have co-authored papers with (usually members of your doctoral committee also are not appropriate letter writers).

It is important that when you get asked to present such a list that you are not left with an "empty feasible set," meaning that you cannot think of anyone who would be willing to write a letter for you (and, hopefully, the letters will be positive). Usually, the letter writers have to be tenured Associate Professors, if not Full Professors. so they are senior to you. Some colleges and universities do not allow letters from industry (which I find strange since some outstanding research can be done in corporations and if you are a faculty member at a business school having impact in business to me is a plus).

So how does one begin to build a network of individuals that might be willing to write letters for you once it is time for promotion and tenure?  Every year I get asked to write such letters and enjoy doing the evaluations.

Clearly, if you have published regularly in a journal and have also refereed and done a great job, then having an Editor or Associate Editor of a journal that is familiar with your work as a possible letter writer is  an excellent possibility. Also, if you have contributed to edited volumes of books or special issues of a journal, then the cognizant Editor may be willing to write a letter for you.  Also, those whose work you cite in your papers and who know you and your work are also natural ones to evaluate your research. Now,  another challenge is that some schools forbid you to contact the prospective letter writers beforehand so you should have sufficient "good will" that when you suggest a name that person will not only know you but will be an enthusiastic letter writer for you.

It is important to be active not only in writing papers and getting them published but also in talking about your work at conferences and seminars. Be willing to organize sessions at conferences and do speak to people at conferences so that they become familiar with your work. Do let others know about your research and papers and do your best in being visible in a positive way, of course.

To all those undergoing promotion & tenure this year, best of luck, and to those who have a ways to go, I hope that this post is helpful.

Congrats to Another Female Management Scientist and Operations Researcher on Promotion and Tenure

I received an email this morning with a copy of the official letter attached.

One of my former doctoral students, Dr. Ke "Grace" Ke, who had done very interesting work on financial networks, which are of particular relevance these days because of the financial crisis and systemic risk issues, shared the great news with me.

She has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure at the Department of Finance and Supply Chain Management at the School of Business at Central Washington University.

Ke came from China and received her PhD from the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst with a concentration in Management Science and with a minor in Finance. I was her doctoral dissertation committee chair.

Her dissertation was entitled:, "Statics and Dynamics of Complex Network Systems: Supply Chain Analysis and Financial Networks with Intermediation."

Some of our joint research has appeared in the European Journal of Operational Research, in Quantitative Finance, and in Environment & Planning B.

Dr. Ke managed to even solve the "two body problem" and to relocate from her first academic appointment, post the PhD, which was at the University of Arkansas Monticello, to Washington state, since her husband had positions first at Microsoft and then at Amazon.com. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from UMass Amherst.

Just two months ago, another former doctoral student of mine, Dr. Jose M. Cruz, received his promotion with tenure at the School of Business at the University of Connecticut and was also named an Ackerman Scholar.

2012 is turning out to be a great year for me as an Academic Mom.

It is wonderful to see faculty with expertise in operations research and management science being so successful at business schools!

I am so happy for my former doctoral students, who are now colleagues!

Congrats to Those Being Awarded Promotions and Tenure

This summer, besides doing research, preparing a new course, working with my students, and speaking at conferences, among other professional activities, I have been busy evaluating packets for promotions, and also for tenure. This is a very important task and when I get a request from an outside university or college to evaluate a record of an academic, I devote a substantial amount of time to reading and rereading the publications, assessing the teaching and research statements provided, as well as the supplementary materials, etc.

Sometimes the reviews are anonymous in that the candidate being evaluated has no idea that I am writing a letter of evaluation whereas other times I have been approached by a candidate and asked whether I would be willing to write a letter of support.

Today, I received lots of wonderful news -- a female professor from a southern university that I had written a letter for sent me a thank you for my letter -- she got promoted to Full Professor.

Also, today, UMass Amherst announced its promotions to Associate Professor (from Assistant Professor) and the awarding of tenure (which means your job is secure, which is very important for academics so that they can speak openly and pursue knowledge without restrictions).

In the announcement of 31 faculty awarded tenure were 3 who had spoken, in different semesters, in our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speakers Series. They are: my departmental colleague, Dr. Mila Sherman, of the Finance side, Dr. Kevin Fu of Computer Science (CS), who is the UMass rep to the I3P consortium, with me as the alternate, Dr. Daiheng Ni of Civil and Environmental Engineering, who is one of my transportation colleagues (I hold a courtesy appt. in that department). Also, on the list is another colleague of mine from CS with whom I had co-authored a grant -- Dr. Gerome Miklau.

Congratulations to these and to all the faculty on the list! This is a terrific group of faculty.

In honor of these faculty members, and, as a token of congratulations, I have included the above celebratory fireworks photo in this blogpost. Besides, the fireworks are in the spirit of the July 4th holiday season.