Looking Forward to Teaching My Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare Course at Isenberg

I have been enjoying working on my lectures for my SCH-MGMT 597LG - Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare course during this winter break. I will be offering this course for the third time at the Isenberg School of Management (and have even taught a very condensed version of it at the Vienna University of Economics and Business while I was on sabbatical).

Some of the topics that I will be covering are:

• Commercial vs. Humanitarian Supply Chains
• Disaster Management Phases from Preparedness to Recovery
• Supply Chain Risk Management
• Fundamental Issues in Humanitarian Logistics
• Network Performance, Robustness, and Resiliency
• Learning from Disasters – Business and Humanitarian Ones
• An Integrated Disaster Relief Model
• Perishable Product Supply Chains in Healthcare
• Earmarking and Financial Funds
• Critical Needs Supply Chains Under Disruptions. 

The course attracts students from the Isenberg School of Management, the School of Public Health, and the College of Engineering.  Experts who are practitioners in the subject domain provide the students (and me) with deep insights and personal experiences. Last year, we benefited from lectures by Mr. Rick Lee of the Red Cross, who has since retired, and who made a lasting impact on this organization and numerous people through his 30 years with this organization, and from Dr. Pierre Rouzier, our UMass sports team physician, who spoke on his efforts during the Boston Marathon bombing to save lives and post the Haitian earthquake. We also had the pleasure of hearing from Mr. Jeff Hescock, the Director of  University Emergency Management and Business Continuity, We heard from Mr. Dave Madsen, a renowned news broadcaster in western MA with over 40 years of experience. In addition, my husband, Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney, spoke on disaster communications.

I have done a lot of research in this area with several members of my supernetworks team so the lectures are always being updated and are very current. And, hot off the press, is our paper, 
An Integrated Disaster Relief Supply Chain Network Model with Time Targets and Demand Uncertainty, Anna Nagurney, Amir H. Masoumi, and Min Yu, in Regional Science Matters: Studies Dedicated to Walter Isard, P. Nijkamp, A. Rose, and K. Kourtit, Editors, Springer International Publishing Switzerland (2015), pp 287-318. This book volume also contains a paper by the Nobel laureate in Economics, Professor Paul Krugman.

We were so inspired by the speakers and the value that they added to the course and the students' knowledge that I wrote a Guest Editorial about these "Hometown Heroes." 

This year, we will also be covering the Ebola crisis in western Africa, and the lessons learned. 

I'll be periodically blogging about this course and the speakers this year, so do stay tuned and stay warm!