2009 MORS Education and Professional Development Colloquium Lessons Learned

 

Six Months prior to the event

1.       Establish the room requirements. This requires interaction between the MORS Office, the Site Coordinator and the Event Coordinator, and if possible, the Student Competition Coordinator. At this point the number of student teams is unknown, but typically the number will be less than seven. Also have a room set aside for judges and the MORS Executive Committee. Rooms: Day 1, a primary auditorium that holds at least 125 people, plus 8 breakout rooms (seven for student competition and one for the Executive Committee). Day 2: A primary auditorium and one breakout room. Additionally, a room for the MORS Staff to store things is necessary.

2.       Interaction with the MORS President. Determine how the President visualizes the event. Though the event Coordinator is deemed responsible, the MORS President should have some influence on this event. Remember this is one of the two major events during the President’s term.

3.       Determine whether there is a theme for the Colloquium. This can follow the current or past Symposium or stand alone. No theme is required!

4.       Keynote Speaker. This follows the idea of a theme. If there is a theme, find one of the MORS sponsors that fits the bill. Someone on the Board of Directors has a direct line to each Sponsor.

5.       Find a Student Competition Coordinator. This person takes care of a major portion of the event. They will develop or obtain the problems for the student competition, interact with the judges on the grading criteria, set the teams, determine the ground rules, coordinate the student competition presentations and handle the results.  This may be a good committee effort.

6.       Judges for the Student Competition. Ask the Fellows of MORS, past Presidents, or distinguished colleagues. Ask the most senior member to act as the head judge. Their role is important, as they will be providing the students will constructive criticism. The judge panel should be diverse.

-          School Participation. Start with the Service Academies (Navy, Army, and Air Force) and George Mason University. Each of these has always participated. Talk with NPS an AFIT, they will send graduate students. Next contact the Coast Guard Academy and schools within 150 miles of the colloquia site. Pay particular attention to universities and colleges with ROTC units. E-mails are good, but phone calls still work the best. In addition to the Service Academies, George Mason, the Graduate Level Military Schools, and local colleges and Universities, we should begin interaction with other militarily-affiliated undergrad students, such as: those from The Citadel, VMI, or Texas A&M?

7.       Speakers. Start early. The schools will probably present, but let them know it cannot be their slate of courses. Something new or innovative. Then work through the DoD agencies and past groups that have spoken. Touch base with other members of the Board of Directors for possible contacts and potential speakers. People love to talk about their job, but they need to talk about what they are doing to help improve their analyst’s skills.

8.       Contact Information. Start using Excel to set up a contact sheet with phone numbers, e-mails and assignments. This makes it easy to follow up and pass along to the next Education Colloquium Coordinator.

9.       Visit the site of the event.

10.   For the site:  Digital media requirements. Computer with PowerPoint (version), document reader, computer for student competition rooms. Can attendees use flash drives or must they bring a CD with their presentations?

 

Three Months out:

1.       Start to firm up a schedule. This goes back to having the president on board. 2009 was the first year the students conducted their competition briefs on the first day. It worked well, but needs some refinements. Give speakers 20 minutes and be adaptive. This year two speakers cancelled at the last minute. This allowed longer presentations and questions.

2.       Make follow up phone calls and e-mails to all attendee groups. Let them know monthly that you haven’t forgotten about them. Request updates from your Student Competition Committee. This is a good time to have the Student Competition Problems vetted. This year we had three people evaluate the problems for difficulty.

3.       Coordinate with the MORS Staff. This is a good opportunity for a Telecon. Everyone gets an opportunity to update the coordinator and the MORS Staff. Include all the key players, including the MORS CEO and President.

4.       Ask for biographies of all presenters! Short, two-three paragraphs.

5.       Judges need to be solidified early on (3 months early) so that the student competition coordinator can communicate with all judges prior to the competition and come to a consensus on judging criteria.  This judging criteria needs to be briefed to the students prior to the competition.

 

One Month Out:

1.       Get draft agenda out to all the players (schools, presenters, …). This allows anyone with a hard commitment to let you know so you can modify the agenda prior to the event. The MORS Staff will include this and the biographies in the Welcome Aboard Packet. Provide the detailed modeling scenarios that Joe read aloud in printed form to the audience members.

2.       Final Phone Calls and e-mails.

 

One Week Prior:

1.       Send out final agenda.

2.       Put together you opening remarks. Things to include: Location of Bathrooms, food, telephones, computers, and Lunch. Acknowledge keynote speaker, Site Coordinator, MORS President, student competition coordinator, Judges, schools and MORS staff. People love to be recognized!

 

Opening Day:

1.       Be Flexible!

2.       Take notes on things to change, improve on.

3.       Be friendly and meet everyone. You are the host.

 

After the event:

1.       Write your lessons learned soon, else you will forget something.

2.       Thank you notes to judges and keynote speaker.

 

Student Competition:

1. Design a presentation template for the Student Competition. This reduces the amount of work for the student groups and provides some standardization and they would have a better understanding of what is expected of them in the presentation. As an example:

                Student Competition Formatted presentation

1.       Title of questions and members of the group

2.       Statement of the problem

3.       Required data and potential sources

4.       Solution Methodology

5.       Potential graphs of data and solution output

6.       Recommendations

7.       Questions

 

2.       Collect all the groups slides prior to the first presentation. This levels the bar to a degree, though the groups will learn something from observing those that go before them.

 

3.       The students should be allowed to use computers, if possible.  I don’t think that the spirit of the competition is lost by allowing the students to use PowerPoint and/or the internet (after all, that’s what analysts use in real life situations).  This would, of course, mean that MORS would need to provide each team (plus the judges, probably) with a laptop.

 

4.       LED Timer for presentations. This allows the presenters to know how much time they have left and they can adjust accordingly. Something like http://electronicsusa.com/ck4000.html.

 

5.       Seemed like the elder members of the groups tended to dominate (confirmed by several of my students).  It would be nice to have the undergrads do the briefings, which might make it less “controlled” by the masters/PhD students

 

6.       Judges need to be solidified early on (3 months early) so that the student competition coordinator can communicate with all judges prior to the competition and come to a consensus on judging criteria.  This judging criteria needs to be briefed to the students prior to the competition.

 

7.       Condensing the competition into one day (i.e. having the students work on the problems and then give their presentations at the end of the day) worked well.  Condensing to one day ensures that the students don’t have any homework and don’t feel obligated to rehearse their presentation during the evening.

 

8.       We need to start the student competition earlier (0830 would be ideal) to allow plenty of time for the students to work and the problems, have lunch, and give their presentations at the end of the day. The negative of this is would be the students would miss the keynote address or the colloquium would have to begin earlier.

 

9.       Teams should have at least 15 min for presentation and 10 min for questions.  10 minutes for presentation was a little bit rushed.  5 min for questions only allowed for questions from the judges.  10 min for questions would allow questions from the general audience in addition to questions from the judges.

10.   If the student teams give their presentations at the end of the day, then the judges will likely be deliberating into the evening.  If this is the case, then it would be a nice touch to have a private, catered dinner for the judges to give them a comfortable setting in which to deliberate and reward them for their extra-curricular effort.

 

11.   Plaques (or other “hardware”) are a good choice for prizes for the winners.  It is a great way to honor the students for their hard work.  It also honors Rick Rosenthal in an appropriate way.

 

General Comments (not related to the Student Competition):

 

-          The privilege to attend the MORS Education Colloquium should be a reward for the students.  We (MORS) should strive to construct a Colloquium to which the service academies want to send their best students in OR and related disciplines.  The students should walk away from the Colloquium thinking that they were lucky to have been given the opportunity to attend.  As such, I believe that the entire production should revolve around the students.  We should focus the content of the Colloquium on subjects in which students do not typically receive instruction (think of it as a bunch of tutorials in the “intangibles” of OR:  the history of OR, marketing the OR profession, technical communication, etc.). 

 

-          Overlapping with the VMASC Capstone Conference (or any other event) is a bad idea.  Most of the students were hardly there on Day 2.  If this event is really for the students, then why would we schedule it during a time when most of them would not attend? The Army cadets were absent for most of Day 2, except during their own presentations.

 

-          What about having a MORS Prize for best undergraduate student research project presented at the MORS Education Colloquium?  Each undergrad institution would then be compelled to send their best student research projects to compete for this award (at least partially satisfying our desire for this Colloquium to be a reward for outstanding students).  We could initially ask for two nominees from each of the service academies.  Each would be given 30 minutes to present and the winner would be announced at the end of the Colloquium (same judges as for the student competition). If one or more of the talks are especially good, the student could be an invited speaker at the annual symposium.

 

-          In the same light, what about a student poster competition. With the high cost associated with travel, some school might be able to demonstrate more research opportunities for students unable to attend. (There are reasons beyond cost do play a role in this with sports and other academic conference occurring at this time of the year). Use of the same judges or another group of attendees to select the best poster(s) and have the poster(s) on display at the annual symposium.

 

-          MORS should give serious thought to making this a 3-day event.  If it were 3 days in length, here are my thoughts on how the schedule might look.  Keep in mind, everything on the schedule needs to be geared toward the student audience (except for the 5-hour block when the students are problem-solving – this time can be geared toward the non-student audience).

 

o   Day 1: 

§  Welcome and Introductions (30 min)

§  Undergrad Research Presentations (3 hours)

§  Intro to MORS (30 min)

§  Keynote Speaker (1 hour)

§  Prep for Student Competition  (3 hours)

·         Intro to Student Competition

·         Tutorial:  Problem Solving/Defining the Problem

·         Tutorial:  Assumptions/Constraints/Limitations

·         Tutorial:  Presenting Analytical Results

·         Examples of Quick-Turn Analysis (2 or 3 15-20 min presentations on real-world quick-turn analytical work)

§  Mixer

 

o   Day 2:

§  Student Competition (parallel session for students) (5 hours)

§  Teaching OR (parallel session for non-students) (5 hours)

·         USMA

·         USNA

·         USAFA

·         NPS

·         ALMC

·         Etc.

§  Student Competition Presentations (3 hours)

§  Judges Meeting (Judges Only)

 

o   Day 3:

§  Opportunities to Get Involved in MORS (30 min)

§  History of OR – Mike Garrambone (1 hour)

§  OR at NPS (1 hour)

§  Tutorial:  Marketing the OR Profession (30 min)

§  Tutorial:  Technical Communication (1 hour)

§  Tutorial:  Spreadsheet Modeling Tools (2 hours)

§  Winners Announced (30 min)

·         Undergrad Research Prize

·         Student Competition

§  Wrap-Up (30 min)