A few years ago, the IFORS Educational Resources Initiative was launched to catalog materials from across the globe so that all faculties could have the benefit of an international perspective and of the creativity of colleagues world-wide when teaching OR/MS. Although some materials have been cataloged (www.umsl.edu/~sauter/ifors), the list is significantly biased toward materials available in English, and available in North America. While they are great resources for anyone to use, they do not fulfill the mission of the committee, which was to provide an international catalog that crosses the barriers of language, application and country of origin.

Clearly, we are already aware of some people who are creating, cataloging and supporting OR/MS educational materials worldwide. However, we suspect we are not aware of even a fraction of the materials that is available. In particular, we know we are ignorant of materials that do not appear in English, or that have a particular national focus.

For example, one resource that we have only recently become aware is the Portuguese-English Dictionary created by APDIO (www.apdio.pt/DicIO/), which contains translations of more than 1,500 OR/MS terms. This is a wonderful resource that needs to be included in our catalog, but we would not have found it without the help of the Portuguese Operational Research Society.

Another example is the work in Community Operational Research (originally an ORS initiative), housed at the Lincoln School of Management, that highlights OR/MS practice, as well as some of the work undertaken by students with the supervision of OR/MS faculty. Publicity of such an initiative can encourage other faculty to begin similar efforts, and may even motivate capable students. As before, we would not have found this without help of people at Lincoln School of Management.

This makes us wonder what other wonderful resources are out there.

Please share your secrets with us. Do you use materials in your classes that might be new to other faculties? Have you created OR/MS educational supplements or know someone who has? Are you interested in developing some innovative teaching resources?

If you know of resources, send us a list of them and how they might be acquired (URL for Web materials; e-mail or snail mail address for other materials). If you know of people involved in the creation of materials, please tell us who they are. Of course, if you are interested in working on this project, we welcome your involvement.

Send information to Vicki Sauter via e-mail (vicki.sauter@umsl.edu) or via conventional mail (226 CCB, College of Business Administration, University of Missouri-St. Louis, 8001 Natural Bridge Rd, St. Louis, MO 63121-4499 USA)

Submitted by Vicki Sauter



E-mail to the Editorial Department of OR/MS Today: orms@lionhrtpub.com




OR/MS Today copyright © 2002 by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.
All rights reserved.


Lionheart Publishing, Inc.
506 Roswell Road, Suite 220, Marietta, GA USA
Phone: 770-431-0867 | Fax: 770-432-6969
E-mail: lpi@lionhrtpub.com
Web URL: www.lionhrtpub.com


Web Site © Copyright 2002 by Lionheart Publishing, Inc.
All rights reserved.