INFORMS News: Gorman earns INFORMS Prize for Teaching of OR/MS Practice

Committee Chair Jim Cochran, INFORMS President Susan Albin and Committee member Paul Jensen (front) congratulate Michael Gorman (far right).

The 2010 INFORMS Prize for the Teaching of OR/MS Practice was presented to Michael Gorman of the University of Dayton. Committee member Paul Jensen made the presentation at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas.

According to the prize citation, Gorman’s hallmark is his focus on real-world problem solving and the practice of OR/MS; he endeavors not only to teach theory but also to provide insights into how theory is successfully applied to real problems.

One of Gorman’s strengths is his ability to draw on his corporate and small business experience to bring analytics to life through real applications. He utilizes his extensive contacts to find projects for students in his capstone course; these students regularly consult with clients to apply OR/MS and provide tangible value. In a typical comment, one client acknowledges that Gorman’s students “…produced better results for our hospital than some paid consultants.”

Gorman’s classes are consistently rated among the highest in student satisfaction, intellectual rigor and quantity of material learned. His students routinely express gratitude for the hands-on experiences Gorman provides. One student commented, “Doctor Gorman’s teaching method fostered my interest to continue my education in the operations management field at Ph.D. level.”

Gorman received the “Rookie of the Year” Award for outstanding first-year teaching as a doctoral student at Indiana University in 1989, and he won IU’s Alice French Award for outstanding graduate instruction in 1992. The University of Dayton recognized Gorman with its Alpha Nu Omega Award for Educational Excellence in 2009.