Call for Papers: Special Issue Dedicated to the Memory of Paul A. Jensen

As theory and practice merge, we have seen dramatic advances in the design and use of analytic methods across all subdisciplines of operations research, industrial engineering and business-related fields. This has been accompanied by an explosive growth in computer power, which has allowed for ever-wider implementation and the solution of very large-scale problems. On the other hand, much analysis in industry, government, and academia occurs with commonly available software, such as spreadsheets, running on personal computers with limited processing speeds. Because of the pervasiveness of spreadsheet software, if we succeed in making our analytical tools available in such software and in making those success stories known, we can reach a wider audience. For similar reasons, spreadsheet computation can strengthen the teaching of mathematical models and methods, particularly because it can provide a standard interface across topics ranging from optimization and decision analysis to queueing, simulation, and statistics.

Paul A. Jensen was a member of the operations research and industrial engineering faculty at The University of Texas for over 35 years. During that time, he devoted much of his attention to developing computer-based tools to ease the learning curve for those wishing to solve problems arising in operations research, industrial engineering, and operations management. His Microsoft Excel add-ins have been employed by hundreds of thousands of users and are freely available at http://www.ormm.net. The breadth and scope of their application is remarkable, with many academic departments adopting them as a foundational tool for their programs. This special ITE issue is dedicated to highlighting uses of such tools in teaching, in developing and analyzing case studies, and in practice.

Please note that ITE is published electronically, and resources such as case studies, models, and data sets can be made available through the website.

Submission Guidelines

Papers should follow the INFORMS Transactions on Education submission guidelines (see http://www.informs.org/Pubs/ITE/Submission-Guidelines) and should include a cover letter noting that the paper is for this special issue. Additional information and past issues are available at the journal’s home page (http://ite.pubs.informs.org).

Submission Timeline

The editors encourage potential authors to contact them with ideas for papers before a full submission.

August 1 2012: Paper submission deadline

November 2012: First round of reviews completed, Decisions (and requests for revision, if appropriate) delivered to authors

January 2013: Second round of reviews delivered to authors

April 2013: Final versions of accepted papers to be submitted

July 2013: Publication

Contact Information For Special Issue Editors

David P. Morton and Jonathan F. Bard
Graduate Program in Operations Research & Industrial Engineering
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712