Why I am an INFORMS member – Renew your membership!

From a practical standpoint I am an INFORMS member to support the professional society organized around the field I chose to study, practice, and teach. Professional societies need membership to remain strong, active, and influential, and I am more than willing to help INFORMS in this regard and have done so for over twenty years.

However, my decision to remain a member is more focused on my personal history with INFORMS and all that my membership has made available for me over the years. As an undergraduate student forcing myself to study biology because “being a doctor is good”, discovering O.R. classes, and finding that an O.R. professional society existed with meetings and journal publications really helped me find my academic focus. School actually became interesting! I joined ORSA as an undergraduate and even though I couldn’t understand any of the articles in Operations Research, I still wanted my copies!

After graduate school I worked in industrial R&D as an O.R. staff member. At this stage of my career the INFORMS journals and technical presentations that I could now understand became more of a focus. They helped me do my job for eight years. In addition to doing my job, I also found a new job through INFORMS in academia. As an academic who now teaches O.R., I find myself focusing more on opportunities to help INFORMS through committee work. I find this to be rewarding and a great way to meet a bunch of great people. This is where I am at now, and I will continue to be an INFORMS member. Looking back, it’s hard to imagine what would have been without INFORMS.

Please comment on why you are a member of INFORMS and why you stay a member.