Issues in Education
The Case for Teaching O.R. at Liberal Arts Institutions
By Dawn Strickland
Less than a decade ago, I graduated from a well-known liberal arts school in the South with an undergraduate degree in mathematics. When nearing the end of my college career, I found myself in the all-too-common state of uncertainty about my future. For lack of any other ideas, I decided to look at graduate schools in mathematics. I wrote away for some brochures and, from one school, I received a pamphlet about its O.R. program. My response was, "Or what?" I had never heard the words "operations" and "research" spoken together, so I certainly didn't know what the field of O.R. entailed. After a visit to the famous "Mike Trick's O.R. Page" on the Web, I decided to give it a try. I applied to a few master's programs in OR/MS along with the math programs I had been looking at originally.
Fast-forward a few years, and I am an assistant professor of mathematics with a doctorate in O.R. from Georgia Tech. Unlike many of my fellow graduates, I teach at a regional liberal arts school where I am the only operations researcher for miles.
Most of my students had never heard of operations research before I got here. We only have a handful of math majors, but the few we have are extraordinary. My first advanced course in optimization had 10 students — of these, one is now in a military O.R. master's program, one is an O.R. analyst with the Navy, two entered doctoral programs in statistics, and one is preparing to apply to doctoral programs in OR/MS.
The appeal of OR/MS to these math students made me start thinking about the new INFORMS campaign to market the profession. What if I hadn't received that O.R. brochure when applying to graduate schools? What if my students were never exposed to OR/MS? What about all the extremely intelligent math and computer science students who never heard of OR/MS?
A huge key to advancing our field is to start in the classroom. And by this, I don't necessarily mean the OR/MS classroom. This is not to say that OR/MS professors aren't important — of course, they are the cornerstone of this field. They educate the students who have already decided to pursue operations research. My proposal, however, is to put OR/MS professors into classrooms where the students otherwise may never have the exposure to OR/MS.
Not all great students go to major universities where fields like OR/MS are presented. Many of the brightest young minds attend smaller schools to receive well-balanced liberal arts educations and, often, more personal attention in the classroom. Students in mathematics and computer science at these institutions are "slipping through the cracks" from our perspective; they may long for a career where they apply their skills in a practical way, but they will never discover that OR/MS may be exactly what they are seeking.
I won't pretend that getting operations researchers to these more traditional departments is likely. I only make half the salary of my graduate school cohorts who went to major research universities. I teach three courses per semester (that's semester, not year), and resources at schools like mine are often scarce (e.g., we cannot afford a CPLEX license). To me, though, the job is worth the financial and research sacrifice. I absolutely love my job (on most days!).
Also, many people in the field of OR/MS tend to feel that the jobs I'm endorsing are "lesser" positions, and most advisors urge their graduating students to go to the biggest and best-known research institutions that will hire them. My feeling is that this line of thinking will not serve to grow the field, only to make it more self-contained. To put it stochastically, the big-name OR/MS schools will become absorbing states, ensuring that the equally gifted students at other universities will simply never know about OR/MS.
Of course, this short editorial won't serve to create a sudden influx of OR/MS professors to smaller liberal arts schools, but an effort can still be made by those in our field to reach out to students at those institutions. Perhaps the computer science department at the private school across town would welcome a guest lecture or two on careers in logistics. Maybe the bright-but-unchallenged math major at a nearby regional college will be so intrigued by a presentation on optimization that he will abandon his plans to go to law school and attend graduate school in OR/MS instead. (Don't we have enough lawyers anyway?)
And even if no student changes her future plans because of a class, lecture or professor, at least she will know what OR/MS means and how it is used. When she eventually becomes the CEO of a major corporation, she'll know where to turn for help when operational issues arise.
The only way to spread the word about "the science of better" is to tell the people who: 1) don't already know about it, and 2) may need to use it in the future. What better way than to start with students who already have the basic skills needed in OR/MS? Placing operations researchers in math and computer science departments at liberal arts institutions can influence the profession tremendously. Even schools not considered "highly selective" have a few students who are extraordinary intellectuals. Let's find those students and tell them about OR/MS.
Dawn M. Strickland is an assistant professor of mathematics at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C.
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