Inside Story
Opportunity Knocks
Peter Horner, editor
horner@lionhrtpub.com
Amid all of the doom and gloom of the struggling economy and lousy job market this spring, a ray of sunshine from an unexpected source brightened the landscape for those who toil in the fields of operations research and the management sciences. In April, the AACSB International — the organization of business school deans that accredits business schools — approved new standards for accreditation that require coverage of statistical data analysis and management science in MBA and undergraduate business programs.
Kalyan Singhal, from the Merrick School of Business at the University of Baltimore who led a petition drive to have management science included in the standards, described the AACSB decision as "one of the biggest and best pieces of news in the past 10 or 20 years for INFORMS."
"First of all, every year we will have business school graduates coming out with training in management science," Singhal continued. "They are all future customers of what INFORMS and our profession does. Second, this will increase the demand for management science professors. I expect INFORMS membership to increase by several hundred, maybe even a thousand, over the next several years. Third, it will create new doctoral programs in management science to meet the demand for management science professors. This should also increase the output of cutting-edge research from doctoral work and from subsequent research endeavors of Ph.D. graduates."
Not every member of the OR/MS community we talked to at the INFORMS Conference on OR/MS Practice in Phoenix in May shared Singhal's enthusiasm. At least one business school professor said the new standards could mean management sciences will be pitted against statistics for the hearts and minds of MBAs. Nearly everyone, however, agreed that the revised standard creates a golden opportunity for the management sciences to establish a new beachhead in biz schools ... if the collective OR/MS community is willing and able to seize the day.
For more on the accreditation changes and what they may mean, see INFORMS President Tom Cook's column on page 6 and "The Last Word" column on page 72. OR/MS Today will cover the story in more detail in the August issue. I welcome your comments and suggestions.
Speaking of the practice meeting, kudos go out to Meeting Chair Grace Lin, INFORMS Vice President-Meetings Paul Jensen, Terry Cryan and Sandy Owens of the INFORMS Meeting Services office, and everyone else who had a hand in making the Phoenix conference a first-class event from start to finish. The thought-provoking opening plenary by Dr. Gerald Brown from the Naval Postgraduate School set the tone for an extraordinary three days of presentations, workshops, "birds-of-a-feather" discussions and social activities. The quality of the meeting was matched by the magnificent "desert oasis" setting of the Wild Horse Pass Resort.
It's hard to believe the practice meeting can get any better, but you know they're going to try.
OR/MS Today copyright © 2003 by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. All rights reserved.
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