Editorial—Introduction to the Special Issue: Student Projects with Industry

Abstract

In our undergraduate program at the U.S. Air Force Academy, we have relied on our senior capstone course to provide an integrative and experiential learning environment for our students. Over the 18 years we have offered cadet senior design project, we have noted many educational benefits. We have witnessed our students boasting of their project years after graduating. We have boosted the reputation of our program among external stakeholders who benefit from the practical benefits associated with having a group of undergraduates study their business process and make recommendations for change based upon the use of Operations Research and Analytics. Over this same time, however, we also wondered about the effectiveness of the program: were we really making an impact on the educational experiences of the students? Were the benefits really worth the enormous cost of executing such projects, particularly faculty time? We also explored possibilities of expanding our program from strictly pro bono work to work with paying clients, but were unsure whether this would negatively impact the primary educational goals of the experience. Over the last decade, we have made several presentations about our capstone course at INFORMS annual conferences, receiving many suggestions of how we could improve the course and many comments about how ideas from our course could be exploited at other schools. A vehicle for sharing best practices in projects-based courses seemed to be of value to many schools, and when the editors of ITE approached us about editing a special issue focusing on project-based course, we jumped at the chance. We knew the value that this type of endeavor would make. We hope that you find this collection of papers that address the design and delivery of projects courses to be useful. As we worked with the authors on this collection of papers, we have been impressed with their passion about their courses. They represent many types of schools from around the globe: engineering to business, from small to large, from undergraduate to graduate, and from technical to managerial foundations. Each focuses on the use of OR and Analytics in a practical setting and on the engagement of clients and we encouraged authors to provide “how to” comments based on their experiences. We encourage you to rely on this special issue as a valuable resource. Amongst the articles, you are sure to find a variety of approaches and innovative practices to assist you as you design, modify, or dream about your projectbased course. The five Special Issue articles in this issue form Part 1 of the special issue on student projects with industry. Part 2, containing three more articles, will be published in the next issue.