Integrating Teaching, Research, and Industry Relations for Synergy and Relevance
The aim of this talk is to develop the ideas that teaching, research and industry relations are complementary. By industry relations, I mean interacting with industry, selecting research problems of interest to industry, and writing for the industry audience. I will use two personal examples of the linkage between the three areas. The first example, in the domain of workforce scheduling, developed from my dissertation and main research agenda pre-tenure. That lead to a complex scheduling black-box program I created for a large hospitality company, a primer series of four industry-oriented reports, and to material that I still use in class. The second example, restaurant operations optimization, was driven by an Excel®-based simulation model I created for an undergraduate class. The evolved into a research tool which lead to 13 academic papers and 9 industry-focused reports and tools. I will show a short demo of the current version of the teaching simulator, which continues to evolve as students use it in class.
