Our faculty is internationally recognized for fundamental science and methodological research. Our rankings consistently place us among a handful of leading Operations Research programs nationwide. Cornell’s School of Operations Research and Industrial Engineering has approached engineering education, both graduate and undergraduate, by emphasizing broad mastery of core areas of the discipline: methods of optimization, applied probability modeling and statistical analysis, manufacturing systems design and operation, and systems analysis methodology. Our educational approach focuses on fundamental principles and methods, but uses contextual learning and design experiences to integrate the science with engineering.

Due to our history and mission in the College, our offerings have, by necessity, been oriented toward industry and manufacturing. In spite of that, our graduates are actively recruited by commercial and financial organizations that value the quantitative decision-making skills they have acquired. Many of our students have assumed leadership positions in the financial services, management consulting, and education sectors as well as the industrial sector to which our programs are oriented. A few have achieved success in entrepreneurial ventures, forming or transforming companies in the manufacturing and information technology sectors. Our degree programs (B.Sc., M. Eng., and Ph.D.) are very successful and fully subscribed.

In forming a strategic plan, our first goal has been to sustain our pre-eminence in educating students in the fundamental sciences of quantitative decision making and engineering design principles, preparing them to design and operate complex systems, particularly industrial systems. Demand remains very strong for our traditional offerings and we must preserve that base.

We recognize, however, that the economy is changing. We see a shift in emphasis and opportunity toward the systemization of services and the capitalization of information. To prepare for these new opportunities, our students need a broader offering and set of choices than is provided under our traditional orientation, or, indeed, than is provided anywhere on campus. To maintain the vitality of our discipline we, as a School, need to move into these areas. We also see a strong interest among engineering students in general to combine their disciplines with a technical business education, a service that we are well qualified to provide and organize, at least in part. Our second goal, therefore, is to create programs under which College of Engineering students as well as our own majors can receive instruction in a variety of business and financial services subjects, information technology and information systems engineering, statistical data mining, and systems engineering. These programs would require us to expand our own offerings in these areas and to cooperate with other academic units to ensure that all areas are adequately covered.

Due to the success of our programs, we have had, consistently for the past twenty years, one of the highest student-faculty ratios in the College. Our School’s budget was reduced when Professors Prabhu and Weiss retired and it has not been restored. We rely on M. Eng. tuition returns to finance our operating budget. We cannot prune our offerings or make internal reallocations without damaging the quality of our programs. Our current participation in cross-disciplinary programs such as systems engineering is accomplished through teaching overloads. Clearly, we do not have the internal resources to meet our expanded goals. The proposed areas of growth are all worthwhile. Indeed, they are essential if we are to continue to give students a first rate education in a dynamic time when business and industry are changing rapidly. Consequently, an essential component of our strategic plan is to grow our resources to support new initiatives. Specifically, we seek to hire new faculty in areas that complement our existing strengths, to create and support new program initiatives in these areas, to add course offerings that satisfy multiple markets, and to participate in revenue-generating continuing education activities.

We have identified the following strategic areas for initiatives to support our expanded goals:

1. Business engineering education, financial service systems, financial engineering, and entrepreneurship
2. Information technology, information systems engineering, and statistical data mining as it applies to enterprise, business, and financial services.
3. Systems engineering.

There are three areas related to business in which our School should take leadership in proposing initiatives: business engineering, financial service systems, and entrepreneurship.

Background and Motivation. By Business Engineering, we mean the application of quantitative decision-making tools to all commercial and financial systems. Students throughout the College of Engineering pursue careers that frequently lead to management positions in industrial and service companies. Our program already includes extensive business engineering content. Topics treated in our courses include market analysis; performance measurement; cost, economic and financial analysis; operations management and control; information technology and its applications; information economics; inventory management; and supply chain management. To date, our School has directed our business-related courses primarily to ORIE undergraduate and masters level students. However, more students from many parts of the College could profit from these courses since they have the broad goal of preparing students to apply quantitative methods to the design and operation of complex systems. Our teaching has emphasized the application of operations research and industrial engineering concepts to the design and operation of manufacturing systems, but interest is strong in other types of systems..

Proposals. We propose to broaden our course offerings to cover commercial enterprises other than manufacturing and provide a valuable service to the College of Engineering and the University. We propose a minor in Business Engineering which would include education in economic performance measurement, engineering finance, marketing science, statistical data mining, entrepreneurship, information systems engineering and strategy, operations management, international business, and project management.

This proposal can be satisfied to some extent using existing courses in our School and in other academic units. It would require the creation of three new courses and adequate staffing of existing courses if enrollments increase due swelling interest by non-ORIE students. These new courses serve other strategic areas as well.

Background and Motivation. In 1995 the School of Operations Research and Industrial Engineering and the Johnson Graduate School of Management jointly launched an innovative program in Financial Engineering under the leadership of Professors Heath (ORIE) and Jarrow (JGSM). At the time the program began, it was one of only a few offered in this country. Student interest has been extremely strong and since its inception, approximately 150 students have received a M.Eng. degree in the School of ORIE with a concentration in Financial Engineering and 13 students have received Ph.D. degrees in this area. The departure of Professors David Heath and, subsequently, Glen Swindle was a major setback that must be repaired.

Proposals. A senior person to lead ORIE’s effort is being sought and, if resources allow, a junior faculty member in the area will be added. Additionally, a healthy program requires expertise in statistical analysis of financial data, data mining, simulation, computational finance (partnerships with Cornell’s Theory Center are currently being explored) and the economics of information as well as continuing contacts with the financial services industry.

We propose to have a position for a rotating industry appointee who would be Financial Engineer-in-Residence, a statistician with expertise in data mining and the statistical fitting of financial models to data. Courses which must be offered on a regular basis include: stochastic differential equations and their applications to financial modeling, information economics in the financial services industry, stochastic models of options valuation, numerical methods in finance, and statistical data mining.

Background and Motivation. Many of our successful alumni have seized entrepreneurial opportunities based on the knowledge they acquired at Cornell. In 1995, the College of Engineering established the Harvey Kinzelberg Enterprise Engineering Program. The goal was to develop an undergraduate program in engineering that relates engineering education in the traditional engineering disciplines to a business environment with emphasis on entrepreneurship.

The program begins with a freshman/sophomore course that introduces students to the role of engineering in most aspects of the business venture. This course discusses the role played by engineering and technology in business and includes modules covering basics such as accounting, technology forecasting, competitive market forces, and human resource management. After the initial course, students pursue in-depth study in their major, and add work experience and project experience relevant to entrepreneurship. The program currently concludes with a senior level capstone course. This covers the development and presentation of case studies, the development of a comprehensive business plan for a high technology, high growth product or service, and also contains structured modules on strategic planing, financial engineering, human resource issues, intellectual property and other legal issues. This capstone course will also develop other topics required for generating a high technology entrepreneurial engineering-based enterprise. The Harvey Kinzelberg Enterprise Engineering Program is also responsible for the development of project and internship opportunities to enhance the classroom experience and for organizing a suite of guest speakers—most of whom will be Cornell Engineering alumni.

Proposals. The Kinzelberg Enterprise Engineering Program directorship has been stabilized with the appointment of John Callister. We propose that the director can also contribute to the undergraduate educational goals listed above under Business Engineering. Additionally, it is recommended that the Kinzelberg Enterprise Engineering Program be expanded by the appointment of a half time adjunct instructor and a half time Entrepreneur-in-Residence. Endowments must be sought to fund these positions. Some of the director’s duties should be shifted to long term planning, to other teaching which contributes to the education of undergraduates in Business Engineering, and to advertising and maintaining the program. The Entrepreneur-in-Residence could run a flexible senior seminar that would be tuned to his/her background and experiences and would feature case studies, an enhanced speakers program, and discussions about finding internships and ultimately jobs.

Background and Motivation. The practice of both operations research and industrial engineering has come to depend so heavily on the tools of information technology that a student who cannot demonstrate familiarity with the basic tools will be at a severe disadvantage in the job market. Furthermore, career and entrepreneurial opportunities are mushrooming in information systems engineering and related fields. The skills required to exploit these opportunities include much of what is central to operations research and industrial engineering, namely, a systems perspective, a business understanding, systems modeling and data analysis, and systems optimization.

Students need to understand the computing and communication tools that deal with the organization, management, and transmission of information. These tools form the underpinning for the information revolution that is creating opportunities for new markets and marketplaces, broader approaches to management, integrative design processes, extensive simulation, and more comprehensive planning and control. Examples of these tools include relational databases, multiple choices in networks and connectivity, client/server distributed computing architectures, artificial intelligence, data mining, data visualization, nested simulation models, search and optimization techniques, internet programming languages, sensors and data acquisition, data warehousing, and application wrappers, to name a few. Some of these tools are in the domain of computer science and electrical engineering, but they have matured to the point of general applicability.

Our School supports an Information Technology Concentration within the Master of Engineering degree as a first step in addressing these needs. The current Concentration is insufficient if we are to equip students with the knowledge and skills they need to become leaders in these emerging areas.

Proposals. We propose that our School advance an undergraduate minor in operations research and information systems and, after a three year period of evaluation and development, the School offer an undergraduate major in operations research and information systems. The curricula we propose exploit the strengths of our faculty in operations research disciplines and approximate the specific requirements of a model curriculum in information systems developed by ACM/AIS.

The proposed minor requires courses in the following areas:

• business fundamentals (organizational behavior, accounting),
• OR fundamentals (probability, statistics, optimization, simulation, stochastic modeling),
• computer science (data structures and algorithms),
• information technology, design and implementation (information systems analysis, information systems practicum),
• project management,
• information economics (the study of information as an economic good), and
• electives (network design and optimization, stochastic systems analysis, data mining)

As is the case with all the initiatives proposed, some of these courses must be created and the rest can be found in existing offerings of our School and other academic units.

The major in Operations Research and Information Systems will build on the experience gained with the minor and will result in two majors within our School: the current stream, which is oriented toward manufacturing and traditional industrial engineering, and a new stream oriented toward information systems. The introduction of a new major would require a slimming of core requirements and the modularization of some courses to allow students more flexibility. For example, the current junior level stochastic process course would be split into two modules. All students would take the first module and, depending on which major within ORIE they have chosen, students would choose the appropriate second module.

This initiative in information systems will require the addition of a faculty member in this area. Such an individual could also support the business engineering and the systems engineering initiatives.

Background and Motivation. Systems Engineering is the discipline of applying mathematical, scientific, and engineering principles to the definition, design, development and operational evaluation of total systems solutions to a wide variety of engineering problems, including the integration of human, physical, energy, communications, management, and information requirements. The urgency that corporate America attaches to systems engineering is borne out by statistics which indicate that for the decade 1996 to 2006, Systems Analysts will have the second largest job growth in absolute numbers, and the third fastest percentage growth.

In 1998, the College of Engineering formed two inter-disciplinary committees to explore what Cornell should be doing in the area of systems engineering. As a result, a new M. Eng. level course in systems engineering and an M. Eng Option in Systems Engineering have been initiated.

The new course, Applied Systems Engineering I (3 cr.), has been team-taught by six faculty members from five academic departments. From our School, Professors Peter Jackson and Robin Roundy have participated to further the success of the systems engineering initiative. This participation was taken on as a teaching overload.

Proposals. In addition to the initiatives already undertaken, other plans for systems engineering include expanding the M. Eng. option into a M. Eng. degree, creating a Ph.D. program in systems engineering, and engaging in some form of continuing education. By the academic year 2000-2001, another new course, Applied Systems Engineering II, will be taught for the first time. The union of Applied Systems Engineering I and II will contain modules on optimization, discrete event simulation, engineering economics, and systems reliability and are likely to include heuristic optimization (genetic algorithms), decentralized optimization (auction-based and multi-agent systems), manufacturing systems design, and possibly experimental design. All of these topics are central to the field of Operations Research and Industrial Engineering. There is no question that our School should be involved but it is not reasonable to expect that School faculty should continue to donate time as an overload. This problem will be exacerbated as the program grows and there is increasing demand for advising, project supervision, thesis supervision, and continuing education.

Our strategic plan calls for the addition of one full-time equivalent faculty member to support the systems engineering initiative. This individual would also support the initiatives in Information Technology/Information Systems Engineering.

The three strategic areas we have identified overlap each other and new courses that must be implemented serve more than one strategic subject. To aid in approximating the new resources that will be needed, the following is a summary list of proposed new courses that are needed if our School is to have a credible presence in the new areas:

• Information systems analysis (Information systems I)
• Information systems engineering practicum (Information systems II)
• Applied systems engineering II (joint with CEE, MAE, EE, CS)
• Statistical data mining
• Information economics applied to the financial services industry
• Stochastic processes and options valuation
• Stochastic differential equations applied to financial modeling
• Numerical methods in finance (joint with the Theory Center)
• Network design and optimization
• E-commerce and its implications for financial and industrial enterprises
• Senior Financial Engineer-in-Residence seminar
• Senior Entrepreneur-in-Residence seminar

We have outlined initiatives for expanded education in the three strategic areas of business, finance and entrepreneurship, information systems engineering, and systems engineering. These initiatives form a timely response to fundamental changes in the marketplace for engineers. We cannot realize this vision of an expanded mission by cannibalizing resources and attention from our very successful core offerings that continue to be in high demand. What it will take to realize this vision is a series of targeted hires of the following types:

• A senior faculty member to lead the financial services engineering effort (replacement for David Heath)
• Three junior to midcareer faculty members to support financial engineering, information systems and systems engineering
• Visiting Financial Engineer-in-Residence, visiting Entrepreneur-in-Residence and a half-time adjunct lecturer in entrepreneurship.

We will work with the College on fund-raising activities to secure the endowment necessary to achieve our goals.