The Making of Largest Student Chapter of INFORMS

For starters: TAMU Chapter of INFORMS is the largest student chapter in the USA. Could be In the world.


As my roommate and friend Abhishek will recollect, we used to have discussions about what can be done at the INFORMS student chapter, and at other avenues related to our professional circles. I am not sure if I have been able to implement all of the ideas that I may have raised during those discussions, but I am sure I have implemented quite a few of them as a President.

Well, I intend to scribe my thinking behind some of the initiatives that you see in the INFORMS Student chapter today. This will help future president in understanding why some of the initiatives were taken and may be motivate some more leaders. First, I want to state, that I admire Burcu, and in fact thank her for taking the initiative to establish the chapter. You cant imagine the effort it takes unless you try it yourselves. So, in order to assess 'weight' of my 'thanks', you will have to go and try to set up a new chapter, and then come back to read this just after 15 days. It is also evideint from the fact that Burcu has received Best Officers Award by INFORMS-TAMU and Judith Liebmann Award by INFORMS, in 2006 at Pittsburg meeting. SO hats off to her. I was secretary of INFORMS Student chapter, and she is modest enough to call us the founding team, where actually, she founded it alone and asked us to join the executive team. I was lucky to have some HTML skills that I was really of some use in her committee and created and maintained the website. In that one year as secretary, my interactions with INFORMS website, and in an effort to create our own website, I visited almost all the chapter websites and numerous other university websites. I used to get a number of ideas and discuss with Abhishek. Abhishek used to often tell, if you are having so many ideas, why dont you try to implement them. Finally, Abhishek nominated me for President.

It is a long journey since then. Each and every step was a learning step. In my presidential year at INFORMS-SC I have learnt a lot from those surrounding me, faculty, studedents and professionals. I dont want to name any because I am sure to forget a few. I want to thank everybody who was related to INFORMS-SC and contributed. Burcu holds a special place becuase we were labmates and she always felt that the chapter was "her baby" and was always interested in discussing with me if I had something to discuss. In just about one month, I shared some of the activities related news to her (that we have crossed 100 members mark etc.) and our growth as a chapter, and she used to say, "Homarjun, I am proud of you. I see the chapter nurturing well in your hands, and I am very happy". Now, I must say, amidst all the challenges, those words very very encouraging.

Now, in the first part I will talk about the strategy. I needed to identify and articulately state the chapter objectives. Then, I needed to answer "How to achieve these objectives"? You may be amazed, the whole success depends on how well you identified and articulated the objectgives and how well you implemented the methods you decided to use to realize the objectives. The first part was actually easy. INFORMS website states the objectives. Chapter constitution also does it. In my opinion, the difference lies in your understanding of the vision behind those objectives. Trying to understand the big picture and student chapter's role in that picture gives you much deeper understanding. From these objectives, I tried to build an activity list. For your reference, I have listed the objectives and the activities from my first presentation to the new student's orientation below.

Objectives

1.Encourage interest in the field of OR/MS
2.Facilitate communication and networking
3.Provide informal forum for OR/MS educational programs and opportunities
4.Provide informal means of sharing information about the methods and techniques of OR/MS
5.Present a forum of speakers who address OR/MS topics

Activities:

1. Industry Seminar
2. Graduate Student Seminar
3. Technical Workshops
4. Mini-Colloquium
5. Social Picnic, Field Trip, Sport events
6. Cookie and Coffee Hour

New Volunteer Positions
•Secretary-Memberships
•Secretary-Alumni Relations
•Coordinator-Socials
•Coordinator-Workshops
•Coordinator-Fund Raising
•Coordinator-Seminar

I would say these activities are not new. They exist in almost every chapter, and they in fact were conceived and also implemented in our chapter before also. The difference was the emphasis on the objective of spreading the awareness. To spread, we needed to raise the membership, and therefore raise the event participation and thereby increase awareness. In order to raise the membership and increase the scale of the event, we needed more people to help us. I designed a set of new positions and made a presentation for the new students who had just joined us. This is where the explosion started. With the small budget of couple of hundred dollars, we invested significant chunk of it in our first welcome party in which we served pizzas. Some 70 people attended and listened to the presentaion while eating pizzas. I think the students were sharp. They immediately understood the vision, and came forward to be a part of the chapters new team. It was unbelieavable. I had more applicants that positions. The team had a quick meeting and we immediately decided that a position can be held by any number of volunteers, they would just work as a team rather individuals. This idea was very successful. We didnt turn down a single volunteer. At one point, the total number of INFORMS officers reached as high as 20. It was a very hectic semester. Chapter conducted 5 Industry speaker seminars, 4 free technical workshops, 5 graduate students seminars, one farewell party for graduating students in just a short span of 10 weeks. It was an unbelieavable semester. Volunteers were excited. I remember, IE department awards ceremoney invitation go to all student organizations and this year, of the total 35 or so studnets, 20 were from INFORMS student chapter alone. INFORMS student chapter distributed ~7 awards to the faculty, staff and students. Dr. Peters jokingly said "If that is the rate, then INFORMS may have to have their own banquet next year". It was hard not to notice INFORMS chapter in the department.

Clearly a good team and good set of events is foundation of a successful organization. Since the objective was to grow the chapter, we prepared the answer for "Why should I join INFORMS Student Chapter?".

The students often have to learn some or the other new software to do well in the class. We identifies this as an opportunity to provide value to the members and the idea of workshop series was started. Being an IE, I stressed on the following.

1. Make it easy to enroll in the workshop. Make it online; the easiest methods for students.
2. Publicise well. (By All Means, Flier, Electronic,Word of mouth, and others)
3. A PULL system rather than a PUSH system. Give them what they want. So, if the desired workshop was not listed, they could suggest a new workshop. If the numbers were sufficient, we would arraneg the workshop.
4. Do it just in time. Its no point givind a workshop when the project is already over or started. Give it early enough.
5. Learn and improvise. Our friend and workshop coordinator Bikram came up with the idea of Feedback forms. We asked the participant to fill the forms. They were a great way to learn and improvise.

This simple strategy, gave us the first 100 members, and many volunteers and supporters. It raised the moral of the team and brought accolades from all corners of the department.

If asked, I give credit to the two events.
The Initiatives:

New Events:

Workshops
Industry Seminar Series
Farewell
Picnic
Prizes for Faculty, Staff, Volunteers

2006 Awards:

Staff: Judy Meeks
Graduate Student: Jung Jin Cho, Fatih Mutlu
Officer: Burcu Kesin , Ezgi Can Eren
Faculty: Dr. Sila Cetinkaya, Dr. Eric Bickel


push-button published newslettor

It probably is a lot to write in just one night, therefore in the days to come, I will explain that with what motivation all of these activities were initiated.