of the
Task
Force on the Recruitment and Retention of Students
and Young Professionals to INFORMS
This edition of the Task Force report was annotated by Arthur Geoffrion on 7 October 1997 as a basis for further discussion. It is being forwarded as an email attachment to all of the people who would be involved in implementation, and will be posted on the Fall Board Forum for further inspection and discussion. He offers his sincere thanks to all who contributed to this fine collection of recommendations.
Specific initiatives are identified for convenient reference by tags of the form [[#]], where # is a sequence number. Geoffrion's personal commentary appears within double angle brackets: << ... >>. This includes many queries to specific people and committees for which responses are hereby kindly requested.
Members of the Task Force
The task force also received additional help and suggestions from a number of people including the following:
Initial Draft: July 21, 1997
Most Recent Update: August 21, 1997
Update incorporates:
Feedback: you may send suggestions, concerns, and other comments to Jim Orlin
Outline
1. Structure of the Student Affairs Committee
4. Activities at INFORMS conferences (other than job placement)
6. Keeping in touch with students
1. Structure of the Student Affairs Committee
In the past three years, the student affairs committee has never met, and it has consisted of the chair of the committee, the head of OR/MS Tomorrow and the person in charge of the next doctoral colloquium. We recommend that the Student Affairs Committee take an active role in monitoring student activities within INFORMS as well as taking a proactive role for specific activities such as the doctoral colloquium. Accordingly we recommend a change in the membership of the committee.
Current Membership (as of 7/97)
Proposed Membership (as of 1/98) [[1]]
<< This is proposal is advice to Karla Hoffman,
who will appoint the 1998 Student Affairs Committee. To the extent that
it is accepted, it should also find its way into the P&P Manual.
My view is that the proposed committee is too large, and has too many people
who, owing to prior responsibilities, will view their participation as
ex officio and of secondary importance. What this committee needs, and
in fact ALL committees need, is several members who are excited about the
committee charter and agenda and willing to take on projects and do real
work. It needs more workers and at least 5 fewer advisors. Karla, what
is your view? >>
The student affairs committee should meet at least once a year at a national conference, possibly two times a year at the discretion of the chair of the committee.
At the meeting, the student affairs committee should review all ongoing activities and solicit whether there are any initiatives that someone wants to propose. Its primary purpose is information sharing, so as to avoid unnecessary overlaps and duplication, and to try to prevent important activities from falling through the cracks.
The student chapters for INFORMS play an important role on some campuses, and have the potential to play an important role for other campuses. We reiterate INFORMS policy of actively promoting its student chapters, and gently encouraging its student chapters to be more active.
Web sites. [[2]]
<< Everyone agrees to this. John Birge, Chris
Bullen, Philip Djang, Don Gross, and Valerie Tardif are doing what they
can to encourage more and better student chapter web sites. Does anyone
have any suggestions for new ways to promote? Just 8 of 40 student chapters
have sites now, so we have a long way to go. It is a good idea to urge
the faculty advisors to promote development; this falls to Valerie and
Don. It falls to Karla Hoffman to urge the next chair of Student Affairs
Committee to action. >>
Given the "webification" of INFORMS, we recommend that INFORMS continue to encourage student chapters to create web sites, and seek out further ways of promoting this activity. Not only do student chapter web site help to promote the student chapter, but it would help to promote Operations Research and Management Science on the campus, and it helps to promote student chapters elsewhere.
Perhaps the most direct way to encourage a web site is for a faculty member to play an active role in encouraging the web site. Some possibilities include:
1. The faculty advisor of the student chapter could discuss a web site with the officers of the student chapter, and/or
2. The chairperson of the student affairs committee could directly encourage the web site.
The encouragement should be non-coercive, but might consist of pointing out the value of the web site as well as offering suggestions and help on constructing the web site. In general, the server should be located on a server of the student chapter's university. However, occasionally university servers have restrictions that would make this impossible. In those situations, INFORMS (IOL) should offer an alternative. If INFORMS regional web sites are created (see below), then the chapter home pages could be stored on these.
Valerie Tardif reports that INFORMS already provides some support. "Templates
were created that student officers can download, but there were few takers.
There is now the offer to have a web page made for free (http://www.informs.org/subdiv/subdiv.html)
and still you don't see web pages popping up as fast as we would wish."
Student Chapter Handbook. [[3]]
<< Good idea if volunteers can be found (the
staff in Linthicum is too overworked these days for me to ask them to take
this project on). Karla, would you want to task the new Student Affairs
Committee with this task? Valerie, would your committee want to take it
on? >>
In order to encourage active student chapters, INFORMS should develop a handbook for student chapters, possibly web-based. This recommendation is already implicit in Initiative 13 of the Shared Destinies initiative, which is to "Compile a Development Source Book". Mary Magrogan is already preparing a packet for new officers of a subdivision.
Student Awards. [[4]]
<< Good suggestion. Valerie, would your committee
want to take this on? >>
In order to maintain a high level of enthusiasm for student chapters, INFORMS should be sure to recognize active student chapters. We recommend two different awards.
1. Web-site awards. We suggest that a subcommittee be charged with awarding effective, high quality web sites. These awards should be lighthearted in tone and cover a range of award topics. Perhaps they could be presented at an annual meeting as a poster session.
2. Recognition awards for active student chapters.
The awards would be the responsibility of the Student Chapters Subcommittee.
Annual Reports [[5]]
<< Good suggestion. Mike Trick, do you agree?
If so, could one of your Associate Editors take on this project? >>
Currently, each chapter is required to submit an annual report. To facilitate the annual report, INFORMS should create electronic web-based forms. {Pat Driscoll suggests a Word-based format as opposed to a proprietary format such as FormFlow.}
Some possible items for inclusion in the report are the following questions:
The job placement service is one of the most critical services that relates to students. As such, it is worthwhile for INFORMS to devote considerable energy to making it as successful as possible. We have a couple of suggestions with regards to job placement.
A. Job Placement on Line
[[6]]1. The editor in charge of job placement at IOL should be a member of the job placement committee, ex officio. << A reasonable idea. Karla, this is up to you. If accepted, the P&P Manual needs to be changed. >>
[[7]] 2. In order to solicit additional names for the IOL listings, a person should be charged with monitoring other news lists (such as DMANET and OPTNET) for news about job positions in OR/MS. << A reasonable idea. Mike Trick, what do you think? >>
B. Job Placement at Conferences: a Poster Session
for Job Applicants [[8]]
<< Interesting idea that falls to the Meetings Committee and Meeting
Services to consider. Tom Gulledge and Julie Eldridge, what do you think?
>>
The primary recommendation of our task force with respect to job placement, is to hold a poster session every fall conference devoted to technical presentations for students on the job market. We suggest that the poster sessions should be on Sunday afternoon starting in the fall INFORMS meeting in 1998.
The session presenters would be restricted to students who have signed up for job placement. It would be a very efficient way for any school with an academic position to survey the group of available candidates. (We propose that the session be on Sunday so that it would permit three additional days for follow-up interviews.) By putting the job applicants all in the same room, the process of meeting candidates becomes very efficient, while maintaining a high level of informality.
One side benefit is that anyone in INFORMS could meet the current group of students entering the job market. It would permit everyone to get in touch with the future leaders of our profession.
Issues.
A poster session for students on the job market could be very difficult to manage. Candace Yano suggests that there would be more than 100 students involved in the poster session. If the session became particularly successful, the number could grow to 200 over the next few years. Given the large number of persons involved, and given the importance of the session to individual students, it is paramount that the poster session be managed effectively.
One possibility would be to have professional management involved (possibly local to the conference) and to charge students a fee in order to cover the costs of management and materials.
{Pat Driscoll adds " If these folks contributed their information to an INFORMS Resume' on Line site as part of signing up for job placement (it would have a scanned photo, resume', contact information with a hot link to their e-mail, and abstract), the package would be a little more lasting than one meeting. And, I would recommend a 1-year expiration so that the site can be purged in a timely manner.}
If there are 100 presentations at the poster session, or more, the poster session becomes the equivalent of 25 parallel sessions. In order to ensure that the job applicants receive appropriate attention, we suggest that there be no other parallel sessions in the first time slot for Sunday afternoon.
4. Activities during INFORMS conferences and before conferences.
One of the most memorable experiences of many of our young academic members is the doctoral colloquium. And for many other students, other activities at INFORMS meetings are both important and memorable. INFORMS has continually encouraged students to attend conferences (both through reduced fees and through student based activities). We suggest that INFORMS continue these promotional activities as well as develop additional ways to encourage students to attend meetings and to facilitate attendance for those interested students.
The INFORMS conferences provide many services that are important in recruiting and maintaining young members.
1. They provide opportunities for informal networking.
2. They provide professional development opportunities.
3. They help keep members abreast of relatively recent developments in the field, as well as tutorials to help learn more about related developments. (It would be helpful if INFORMS created more opportunities to hear about exciting very recent developments.)
4. They are often the primary introduction to INFORMS.
5. They can play an important part of the process of job placement, through the INFORMS job placement service.
Given the value of conferences to our students, it is important to do the following:
1. Provide incentives (and make it easier) for students to attend conferences.
2. Make sure that there are well-run activities at conferences that are targeted to students.
A Spring Pre-Conference Student Colloquium [[9]]
<< Nice idea. Based on what happens at Valerie's
session in Dallas, I would hope for a Board motion at the Winter Interim
Board Meeting (if there is one) from Valerie's committee and the Student
Affairs Committee. It is important to involve pertinent Board Liaisons
and INFORMS staff. Please consider seeking industry sponsorship, since
INFORMS' finances are precarious just now. Valerie, how does this sound?
>>
The current doctoral colloquium precedes each fall national conference. It is functioning smoothly and provides substantial value. Many students have extremely fond memories of the colloquium. The only concern that has been raised about the fall colloquium is that it is not sufficiently promoted, and many students are not aware of its existence.
We propose that there be another pre-conference colloquium prior to the spring INFORMS meeting. Whereas the fall colloquium is primarily directed towards doctoral students who intend to enter academia, the spring colloquium would be targeted to other students, that is, those entering the private sector (industry) and the public sector (government).
The spring colloquium could include both Masters students and Ph.D. students, and possibly recently graduated students as well. There are a number of topics that are particularly well suited for industry. (Some possible topics include the following: leadership, the effects of the corporate culture, consulting, moving up the corporate ladder, the difference between big firms and small firms, etc.)
We recommend that the first spring doctoral colloquium be offered at the Cincinatti INFORMS meeting in 1999.
Other issues.
Fall colloquiums are organized by an academic. We recommend that the spring conference be jointly organized by an academic as well as someone from the private sector. In addition, we hope that the Roundtable could play a role in recommending speakers (and possibly in arranging industrial funding), especially given the opportunities that the spring colloquium would have for promoting OR/MS in industry.
Conference Costs for Students
Students are very price sensitive, and so it is important that prices be reduced for students. INFORMS already has a policy of substantially subsidizing the costs for students; however, we have some further recommendations.
[[10]]1. Permit 1-day registration for students.
This may be an attractive incentive for students who live close to the
conference and who have never attended an INFORMS conference. For one-day
registrants, there should also be an opportunity to purchase tickets for
the general reception (and other special events), with reduced rates for
students.
<< I recommend that this suggestion be referred to
the Meetings Committee. Tom Gulledge, what do you think? >>
[[11]] 2. Have a further registration fee reduction
for students who have never attended an INFORMS conference. {Pat Driscoll
adds " And, issue them a nametag with
a special designation that contains a certain amount of humor," pointing
out the value of adding more humor to our activities.}
<< I recommend that this suggestion be referred to
the Meetings Committee. Tom Gulledge, what do you think? >>
[[12]] 3. Offer partial travel reimbursements in
exchange for students who volunteer their services during the conference.
<< I recommend that this suggestion be referred to
the Meetings Committee. Tom Gulledge, what do you think? >>
[[13]] 4. Develop a pre-conference web site devoted
to students, and maintained by the local Student Activity Committee (SAC,
see below). The web site could list information on reducing expenses such
as the following:
<< This nice suggestion should be considered part of
the SAC suggestion below. >>
Student Activities Committee
(SAC) [[14]]
<< This very appealing suggestion, which
I take to include #13 above, is up not only to the Student Affairs Committee,
but also to the Meetings Committee. Tom Gulledge, what do you think? >>
For the upcoming Dallas INFORMS meeting, there is a Student Activities Committee (SAC) that has helped arrange a variety of student activities. We recommend that this INFORMS activity be formalized and expanded, and that there be a local SAC prior to each national INFORMS meeting. The Student Activities Committee should include a faculty advisor as well as a committee of local students. (It is also possible to include students who are not local.)
Some possible SAC activities:
The current SAC would be willing to take the lead to ensure that their activities are repeated at subsequent conferences.
A Student Cluster at each INFORMS Conference.
The determination of content of the student cluster would be up to the cluster chairperson, who in turn would be an ex-officio member of SAC. Some sessions that may have some value for students are as follows:
i. A session entitled "Introduction to INFORMS" which would serve to introduce students and others to INFORMS as a society as well as to INFORMS conferences.
ii. Sessions (or a workshop) devoted to professional development. (How
to publish; how to referee a paper; the tenure process; how to deal with
problem students; leadership, how to obtain a mentor and what to look for
in mentors, etc.)
<< This should be coordinated with Student Union's
Professional Development Center. Joakim Kalvenes, what do you think? >>
An issue for fall meetings: How much overlap should we permit with the doctoral colloquium.
Networking at Conferences.
One of the most valuable activities of a conference is the networking with other colleagues. In this regards, students are in a difficult situation because it is often the case that they do not know others at the conference. If possible INFORMS should help in networking.
[[15]] 1. Have a student lounge at each conference.
<< I recommend that this suggestion be referred to
the Meetings Committee and to Meeting Services. Tom Gulledge and Julie
Eldridge, what do you think? >>
[[16]] 2. Have other social activities for students.
<< I recommend that this suggestion be referred to
the Meetings Committee, the Student Affairs Committee, and to the new SAC
proposed above if it comes into being. Tom Gulledge, any comments? >>
One of the primary methods for attracting students to INFORMS is to make them aware of INFORMS as soon as possible and as often as possible. There are many approaches to outreach activities, and the general philosophy of "the more, the better" seems to apply. Here we describe several activities that we feel are particularly engaging to students.
Modeling Competitions
The Consortium for Mathematics and its Application (COMAP) has sponsored an annual modeling competition. Last year marked the 12th running of the modeling competition. The competition is co-sponsored by a large number of societies including INFORMS. (See http://www.informs.org/Edu/MCM.html for more information.)
Recently, COMAP has submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund the creation of a High School Modeling Competition in Mathematics (HiMCM). Pat Driscoll (who is a member of the Task Force) has played an active role in the MCM over the past years, and is playing a lead role from INFORMS in the HiMCM. With respect to the HiMCM, we have the following recommendations:
[[17]] 1. Support and institute the HiMCM, insuring
representation of OR-type problems.
<< I recommend that this suggestion be referred to
the Education Committee. Al Gepfert, Erhan Erkut, and Pat Driscoll, what
do you think? >>
[[18]] 2. Provide a small amount of funding each
year for grants awarded to High School OR/MS Teams (Faculty advisor + students)
to assist them in doing applied OR work in some limited capacity for their
local community. This is going to be part of an offshoot to a proposal
called MathServe, under the NSF with COMAP. Pat Driscoll is already working
on how this should be executed, as part of the Advisory Board for the program.
<< I agree that this suggestion be referred to the
Education Committee. Al Gepfert, Erhan Erkut, and Pat Driscoll, what do
you think? >>
The Task Force believes that this form of community support for Operations Research will help in a number of ways:
a) It makes our presence (as a society) known to students, faculty, and the local community in an appropriate manner;
b) It could naturally generate a lot of local free, supportive press for INFORMS;
c) It would provide a natural vehicle for educating students as to what OR/MS is all about as a field;
d) It would encourage young talent to major in Operations Research or Management Science in college.
We recommend that this program be supervised and run within the Education Committee.
Regional IOL Databases for outside speakers plus more.
[[19]]
<< I view this suggestion as premature. We're
not encountering major problems of scale yet. Our main difficulty is finding
enough good volunteers who are willing to work on the national level; multiplying
the demand through regional centers would just exacerbate this difficulty.
Mike Trick, what do you think? >>
One INFORMS resource is a list of outside speakers. This is also a difficult resource to develop and maintain. We suggest that INFORMS consider maintaining this resource at a regional level. Here is a method in which the speaker series information could be regionalized, and still be part of IOL.
1. INFORMS should identify a technically competent, and industrious person in each speaker region, to be designated as one of INFORMS Information Technology Regional Representatives (ITRR).
2. At that site, INFORMS will purchase and place appropriate computing resources with sufficient technological capabilities to house the database information, allow for website material creation and storage and allow for internet connectivity.
3. Each ITRR site could also serve as a mirror site for IOL, permitting more efficiency as well as additional backup.
4. Use this ITRR site as the first point of contact for regional support information for the Student Chapters, local organizations, and local educational institutions. It would also directly support any community outreach programs.
A primary concern would be how to manage this process. Doug Samuelson expressed this concern as follows: "More years than not, we have had trouble finding one competent, industrious person in the whole country to run the speakers' program. Regionalizing it will increase rather than decrease the requirement for the resource we have the most trouble finding." He suggests that INFORMS continue to have one person running this activity.
Promotional Contests.
The promotional contests could be serious or lighthearted. The Task
Force strongly encourages INFORMS to adopt some lighthearted contests.
The American Academy of Forensic Scientists has a session entitled "The
Last Word Society" which highlights professional forensic casework
in which the case has an "interesting twist." This is the most
popular session of their conference. Perhaps we could also institute an
INFORMS conferences devoted to "the strangest OR/MS case." (Pat
Driscoll strongly supports this idea and would be willing to create such
a session.)
[[20]] <<Pat, I'm sure you have everyone's blessing.
Right, Tom? Do you want to take it on? >>
[[21]] Some other possible contests include the
following (some of which already exist):
<< I recommend that this be referred to the new Student
Affairs Committee, the Membership and Member Services Committee, Mary Magrogan,
and Hima Sunkara. All: what do you think? >>
Conference Activities [[22]]
<< The situation will change dramatically with
the appointment of a Director of Public Relations, which should happen
shortly. I don't believe that any action is required before then. >>
INFORMS meetings are currently not set up for Outreach. We believe that INFORMS is missing a valuable opportunity, and investigate ways of using conferences for Outreach.
At a minimum, there could be a session (or sessions) for non-registrants entitled "what is Operations Research and Management Science?"
6. Keeping
in Touch with Customers [[23]]
<< I recommend that these ideas be referred
to the new Student Affairs Committee, Valerie's Committee, Lisa Klose,
Mary Magrogan, and Hima Sunkara. Ladies, what do you think? >>
INFORMS will need to keep in touch with students and other young professionals on a continuing basis to determine how to best serve their needs and how to keep them engaged in the profession.
1. Hima should continue running a focus group each conference.
2. The Student Union should continue to solicit feedback.
3. INFORMS should randomly select a group of students for use in a longtitudinal study . (How does attitude towards INFORMS change over the years?) {This ties in with initiative 19 of the Shared Destiny document.)
7. The
Student Union [[24]]
<< Permanent management is an unresolved problem
that I am working on. Another possibility would be for IOL to appoint an
Associate Editor for Student Union. Mike Trick, what do you think? >>
The Student Union has now been launched, and will need ongoing maintenance and evolution. Temporarily the Student Union should be under the control of the editor of IOL. A small subcommittee (consisting of the chairperson of Student Affairs, the head of IOL, and one to three other persons, to be determined) should determine how the Student Union should be maintained.
8. The INFORMS Office [[25]]
<< This is mainly a matter of money. Randy Robinson,
Mary Magrogan, and Julia Pet-Edwards, what do you think? >>
Students are key to the future of INFORMS, and we recommend that there be a full time staff member at INFORMS who is dedicated to student activities. Some of the responsibilities for the staff member include the following are a set of student (and young professional) related activitities for INFORMS.
- Job placement program (including the proposed poster session at the fall national conference)
- Student colloquiums
- Internship program
- Liaison with student chapters
- outreach (and marketing) to students
- ex-officio membership in the Student Affairs Committee
In addition, the staff member would be the contact point for all students,
and would develop an understanding of student needs as well as their relationship
to INFORMS. And the staff member would be the source of institutional knowledge.
9. Miscellaneous Other Suggestions.