SELL IT BETTER

Issues & Strategies for Academics

As INFORMS members have discussed for years in meetings and in OR/MS Today, we have an important stake in improving the way our field is viewed at universities. Here are practical points for doing so, drawn from the input of INFORMS members who are experienced educators.

Focus on key goals
As an academic concerned about the future of our profession on campus, you should consider pursuing three short-term and long-term goals.

  1. Revitalize and expand O.R. departments.
  2. Increase enrollment in our courses.
  3. Promote the naming of departments as Operations Research departments. Calling our field by a single name will help it to be identifiable in all settings.

Approach key constituents

  • Department chairs and deans:
    • Universities, like businesses, care more and more about the bottom line. We must demonstrate to them that O.R. departments and courses are productive and benefit the university. When deans and department chairs see us take action on behalf of our discipline, they are much more likely to treat O.R. with the respect it deserves.
    • We must convince them that O.R. is critical for the university's students-that an education in O.R. leads to a desired career after graduation.
  • Students: we want to excite students who attend our core and introductory courses, and we want O.R. electives to flourish. We must engage these key student prospects:
    • In business schools: Undergraduates and MBA candidates whom we persuade to become end-use modelers, and students pursuing doctoral degrees.
    • In engineering schools: Students pursuing masters and doctoral degrees as well as bachelors degrees in O.R.

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Improve the quality of instruction
We turned to our INFORMS Education Committee - including Erhan Erkut, Thomas Grossman, James Cochran, Steven Powell and others - for guidance about strengthening the status of O.R. on campus. They agreed that improving the quality of our instruction is the first step. Among their recommendations:

  • Change student perceptions: We know that operations research can make tremendous improvements in organizations. Our goal is to break through to the doubters.
    • Too many students see O.R. courses as useless, overly theoretical, and boring
    • Let's change their perception by taking action. We must make our courses useful, full of examples that are relevant to their lives, and fascinating.
  • Change the way we teach: Let's respond to student requests to enliven our courses.
    • Choose engaging materials. Drive your course with cases and problems, including real and relevant business/organization examples that students might experience right after they reach the professional world. Avoid daunting examples that may discourage them.
    • Invest your personal style by showing your energy, your enthusiasm, and your dedication and making yourself accessible to students.
    • Make the classroom more engaging by encouraging students to be interactive and using multiple modes. Provide lots of variety to keep students interested. Make it fun.
    • Offer a lab that lets students learn by doing and employ student teachers so that there's more interaction among peers.
    • Don't forget the attraction of technology. Set up a course web and lead a course conference. Use spreadsheets to engage students with real-time modeling, optimization, and simulation.
    • Teach your students the additional skills they'll need to practice O.R. in business or government, including how to make presentations to non-technical audiences like business executives and government decision-makers. Help your students plan future collaborations with IT departments. And advise them to learn enough computer programming to translate their work into a format that can be applied in computer software.
  • Leverage AACSP mandates: At business schools, take advantage of the 2003 revisions to AACSB guidelines that support the teaching of management science. (See ORMS Today, June 2003 and August 2003.)
  • Start clubs and chapters: Reinforce enthusiasm inside your classroom by creating student clubs and INFORMS student chapters. Possible activities include:
    • Do workshops for students in Excel and other software.
    • Judge a high-school problem-solving competition.
    • Offer parties and socials to build on the sense of community and friendship.
    • Perform community service O.R. projects locally.

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Feed O.R. graduate programs

  • Engineering school undergrads need encouragement to pursue O.R. graduate degrees. Establish a "grad-prep" track in your undergraduate programs. Promote the idea of graduate O.R. work to undergraduates and identify the strong undergraduates to encourage.
  • Consider establishing a joint degree program with the math department. This endeavor can prepare participating IE students for graduate programs in O.R., and bring math students into O.R. courses, and possibly eventually into a graduate program in O.R.
  • Market O.R. graduate programs to math undergraduates.

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Encourage O.R. careers

  • Help your students turn O.R. into a successful profession after graduation. This may very well be the most important thing you can do to increase enrollment and impress your dean.
    • Give sessions on writing resumes and hunting for jobs.
    • Conduct a career day.
    • Offer a capstone design course in which students tackle real industry projects. Successes in these projects are great selling points.
    • Make business connections that open doors for students.
    • Seek industry internships for grad students. Such job experience promotes ties to industry and promotes industry-relevant research.
    • Coordinate with the INFORMS Job Placement Service, which can offer students a chance to interview with employers at national meetings and post resumes online. Go to www.informs.org/JPS for more information.

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Show O.R. excellence

  • Create an O.R. Center of Excellence to demonstrate the importance of O.R. at your university.
    • Organize workshops and seminars
    • Identify possible consulting projects
    • Seek placements for students
    • Maintain a database of your graduates-and use it. Alumni are extremely valuable as guest speakers, partners in projects, helpers for making student placements, financial contributors.
    • Quantify the impact of O.R. in relevant terms.
  • Seek awards at the faculty, university, society, or national level. They're good for your career, and they demonstrate the importance of your operations research department to deans and department chairs.
  • Point to the accomplishments of operations research academics who have done leading work in homeland security, healthcare, national defense, and other fields. Important: Be sure to emphasize the benefits to society-and financial impact-rather than the models themselves.

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Go beyond your department

  • Serve on important university committees like technology and program review.
  • Demonstrate to other departments what you and your department can contribute, both on campus and in research on behalf of government and business.
  • Offer to speak at programs given by other departments so you can prove your department's worth.
  • Invite colleagues from other departments to appropriate programs at O.R. and INFORMS meetings.
  • Put other departments in touch with the INFORMS Speakers Program, which can provide related specialists for their meetings. (Go to www.informs.org/Speaker for more information.)

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Promote off campus

  • Join groups like INFORM-ED.
  • Do speaking engagements for the industries in which you specialize - and always introduce yourself as an operations research professional.
  • Encourage industries in which you specialize to invite appropriate speakers from the INFORMS Speakers Program.
  • Distribute the INFORMS executive guide ( Download the Executive Guide to Operations Research.)
  • Promote the discipline at high schools.
    • Speak at local high schools about the contributions of O.R. and pursuing O.R. as a college major.
    • Provide lesson plans to local high school teachers. Download the materials created by INFORMS at www.hsor.org.
    • Address local meetings of organizations like the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM).

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Follow models of success

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More resources

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