Sunday, April 14, 2013

Thanks to INFORMS for Supporting Student Chapters -- A Big Package

I stopped by my office this morning to pick up my mail at the Isenberg School and there was a big package in my office on my desk.

The package was from INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences).

The letter inside, which was addressed to me, was from Tracy Byrnes Cahall, the Chapter Relations Coordinator. The thanks therein for my service as the Faculty Advisor to the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter are greatly appreciated, including the sentence: Your volunteer efforts help keep INFORMS alive, growing, and at the forefront of the profession!
 

The contents of the package, which are for our chapter officers and members, are displayed in the photo above -- from CDs of TutORials to pens, Frisbees, a wooden puzzle, and even INFORMS baggage tags (I did help myself to one). There were also several documents, including the Best Practices Guide, which my former doctoral student, Dr. Tina Wakolbinger, who is now a Full Professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, along with Dr. Burcu Keskin, who is an Assistant Professor at the Culver College of Commerce at the University of Alabama, helped to draft.

Thanks to INFORMS for the wonderful support of INFORMS Student Chapter across the nation! Students are the future of our profession and INFORMS excels in nurturing and supporting education and research in STEM and business fields! Our chapter also received a check from INFORMS of $150.

Please join us for our next UMass Amherst Student Chapter activity, which takes place next Friday morning with refreshments at 9:30AM. The event is a panel of Isenberg School of Management and College of Engineering faculty at UMass Amherst plus my  doctoral student, Amir H. Masoumi, who is receiving his PhD next month, on The Process of Applying for and Securing a Faculty Position.

And, since I cannot resist, I would also like to, again, acknowledge the University of Oklahoma INFORMS Student Chapter for being so hospitable to me when I visited and spoke on their campus in Norma on April.1.