Our Guest Post today comes from Dr. Victor Pimentel, who is Assistant Professor of Operations Management at Niagara University. Here he is with his OM students.
Students usually describe Operations classes as tedious, even frustrating. They have a hard time relating the material covered in class with the real world. That is why it is critical for me as a professor to find the right tools to not only engage my students, but to encourage them to pursue a career in the field.
Jay, Barry and Chuck’s OM Blog, has proven to be critical for my early success as a prof at Niagara University. The blog not only bridges the gap between theory and practice, but also encourages my students to read articles, which look at everyday events with a more analytical view.
As part of my class, I require my students to read one article per week, with the article relating to the topic at hand. Then every Friday we take fifteen minutes to discuss it and take a short quiz. The first couple of weeks, I was impressed with how much they enjoyed the readings, which not only clarified why we covered some of the material in class, but also little by little sparked interest in the field. My students have described the articles as “Quick and to the point,” “Interesting,” “Current” and my personal favorite “Understandable, not pretentious.”
The Blog has already affected my student’s tremendously. As an example, while one of my former students was being interview by a multinational bread company, he cited the “Self-Driving Truck Makes a Beer Run” article as an example of how supply chains evolve and how future supply chains will look. He emphasized how much he wanted to be in the front lines as an active participant of this revolution. To nobody’s surprise, he received not one but three job offers from different divisions.
Thanks Jay, Barry and Chuck for making my class so much more rewarding.