2017 July Inside OR

MARTIN KUNC, CHAIR OF THE ERC

The education and research Committee (ERC) intends to provide a strategy for the OR people supply chain.

One of the recent initiatives was to map the landscape of the OR people supply chain and use this knowledge to identify and respond to issues, identify opportunities and develop a strategy for The OR Society. The charitable project provided an understanding of the supply chain of people (practitioners, users and academics) in OR which was employed in our meeting to define the OR people pipeline strategy.

The ERC defined the OR pipeline strategy with additional projects performed in parallel in 2016/7. This task is a critical issue since the higher education landscape is changing substantially due to the new legislation proposed by the government and the impact of Brexit. The education landscape is also changing with the increasing visibility of careers related with analytics, such as data science and computer science. Hopefully, the strategy document proposed will support the actions of academic and company-based OR groups to develop either degrees or apprenticeships, respectively. 

Another initiative in the area of OR people supply chain is 'OR in Schools'. This initiative has been active for a number of years and it has produced important material (online and offline) for the dissemination of OR with students. While there are almost 200 volunteers, we need more proactive volunteers to raise the profile of OR among students. Please, contact your local school to give a presentation and The OR Society Education Officer for materials. One presentation can make an important difference in the future of the OR profession. A final initiative is building a database with all the OR academic communities in the UK. It is important to know who is providing education in OR to the broader community no matter if it is only one person or a full department. Please, contact us to fill the information required for the database.

There are always opportunities to support the OR community in the areas of education and research so, please, contact us.