After receiving my PhD in Applied Mathematics, with a specialty in
Operations Research, from Brown University, and evaluating offers from both academia
and industry, I accepted the offer of a
tenure track faculty position in Management Science, a STEM field, at the
business school at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, now the Isenberg
School of Management. Since arriving on campus in 1983, I have managed to make
“herstory” by becoming the first female Full Professor at the Isenberg School
and the first female named chair professor in the UMass system.
Although UMass Amherst is my home and has provided me with the
right environment in which I could pursue my research and teach courses on
subjects on a variety of network themes including humanitarian logistics and
healthcare, I have always felt that to thrive one needs new academic
experiences and to challenge oneself by broadening one's horizons. Such experiences enrich your scholarship as
well as teaching.
In 1988, shortly after receiving promotion and tenure, I received
a National Science Foundation Visiting Professorship for Women (NSF-VPW) award.
I was off to MIT's Civil and Environmental
Engineering Department for a year as a Visiting Professor in the Center
for Transportation. At that time,I was the only female faculty member in the
department. While there, I taught a transportation network course and also organized a speaker series focusing
on Females in Operations Research at the Operations Research Center. It was a
time when MIT Management Professor Lotte Bailyn organized get-togethers for
female faculty. I remember them fondly and was able to meet and be inspired by
such renowned female scientists as Mildred Dresselhaus. While at MIT I received
a UMass Faculty Fellowship, which allowed me to spend another year at MIT, this
time at the Sloan School.
In 1996, I was invited to be a Distinguished University Visiting
Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden. The
goal of this professorship was to broaden the visibility of female Full
Professors at the KTH since, at the time, there were only two. With my husband, who also managed to get a
Visiting Professorship there as well, and our 2 year old daughter, we embarked
on a 7 month adventure during which I taught a class on optimization, met with
many colleagues there and students, and managed to co-author the book, Financial
Networks. Picking up my daughter, who was enrolled in daycare in Stockholm,
then known as daghis, was always interesting because sometimes I would have to
find her in a local park with her group where she was learning to climb trees
and rocks. She was well-nourished there with a team of cooks preparing lunches
consisting of salmon, potatoes, and carrots, with crunchy bread and fish egg
spreads for snacks for the children between ages 2 and 7. We lived in the
Wenner Gren Center with 150 other visiting academic families. It was a joy to
see groups of children with no common language playing together. We ended up
returning to Stockholm for multiple months in 1998 and again in 2001, when I
co-authored Supernetworks: Decision-Making for the Information Age.
In 2002, I received a Distinguished Fulbright Visiting
Professorship at the SOWI School of Business at the University of Innsbruck in
Austria, so with my now 8 year old daughter and husband we were off to live in
a villa in the Alps while I taught a series of courses on networks, while our daughter
attended school (2nd grade), which was only in the morning, and learned her
multiplication tables in German. If the students did well on math questions
they got to stand on their desks and be applauded. The teacher also taught the
children to rollerblade. Culturally, it is expected that Oma and Opa
(grandparents) will take care of children once school is over, which we did not
have the advantage of, so there was always juggling. Again, the mountains
inspired, and no wonder my daughter ended up majoring in geology and is soon
off for her PhD in this field. We have returned to beautiful Innsbruck because
of the friendships made and once when we did, a colleague was wearing the
Isenberg School t-shirt I had given him. Even the waiters remembered our orders
in our favorite restaurants there.
In 2005-2006, I had the terrific honor of being one of twelve
Science Fellows in a group of about
fifty Fellows at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard
University. This fellowship in a community of writers, scholars from different
disciplines, who listened to one another's guest lectures, and enjoyed lunches
and great esprit de corps, cemented my thrust to continue placing myself in new
environments. While at Radcliffe, I collaborated with female colleagues that
Radcliffe helped to support and
completed my book: Supply Chain Network Economics. It was the year that
Larry Summers resigned and the Dean of Radcliffe, Drew Gilpin Faust, became the
first female president of Harvard.
Over the years 2011-2015, I held a Visiting Professorship at the
School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg in
Sweden, with a commitment of 44 days a year, which was very manageable.
Living again in that marvelous country I have come to appreciate my male
colleagues serious about their parental leaves, the celebrations associated
with having a paper or book published, complete with coffee and cakes, and a
quality of life with great transportation systems and a focus on the environment that I wish I
could bring back to the US with me. My
family has continued to travel with me as their commitments allow.
Last July, I returned from being a Visiting Fellow at All Souls
College at Oxford University, where I spent the Trinity Term, and was provided with an office overlooking a
garden and fountain, and an apartment, with delicious lunches and formal
dinners, so that I could just think, reflect, and write. Although scientists
are the minority among both Visiting Fellows and Fellows of All Souls College,
the conversations with a naval historian, medieval historian, archeologist,
classicist, Sanskrit expert, along with
the mathematicians, physicists, and, of course, economists, I will never
forget. And I managed to complete the
co-editing of the Dynamics of Disasters book and my Competing on
Supply Chain Quality book was published with acknowledgment of Oxford,
which I presented to the Codrington library. On June 22, 2016, Encaenia took
place at Oxford University, during which 9 were awarded honorary degrees,
including Mildred Dresselhaus of MIT. I had the special privilege of speaking
with her and reminiscing about MIT at a reception and luncheon at All Souls
College following the ceremony. Serendipitously, Louise Richardson, who was the
Executive Dean at the Radcliffe Institute. when I was a Science Fellow there,
is now the first female Vice Chancellor at Oxford University. On June 23,
Britain voted to leave the European Union, with major ramifications for the
economy as well as for research funding, and with shock waves permeating
globally. And on June 24, 2016, we celebrated at All Souls College the 50th
anniversary of this magnificent program with a full day of events, despite
Brexit.
While a
visitor at different universities, I have attracted students to our graduate
program at UMass. I have also used the knowledge of the various universities to
help advise UMass students on their future. I believe that my research was only
propelled by my time away and am looking forward to the next opportunity.
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