Greetings!
It is my great pleasure to introduce the inaugural newsletter of the Department of Supply Chain Management and Analytics. As we enter our third year as an official department within the College of Business at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, I wanted to take this opportunity to share with you some of the exciting changes and events taking place within the department. More details on each of these can be found in this newsletter.
The supply chain management major, designed with the advice and support of the SCMA Department Advisory Board, is now in its 8th year and is thriving. We graduated 45 supply chain management majors in FY 2018. Our student organization, the Nebraska Supply Chain Club, has been active in organizing panel discussions and plant tours, and has participated in several regional and national case competitions. Our graduating students continue to achieve excellent job placements and embark on exciting and diverse careers, with an average starting salary among the highest in the College of Business.
To meet the demands of industry and students, we introduced our business analytics minor in 2016. The minor, consisting of four courses in quantitative methods and data analysis, has quickly gained popularity, with a total 38 declared minors. College of Business students from all majors recognize the competitive advantage the minor provides by enhancing their ability to work with data and use data to provide insights to support business decision-making.
At the graduate level, after an extensive approval process, we are very excited to officially launch our new MS in Business Analytics degree. It will complement and expand on our existing graduate offerings, including our successful certificates and MBA concentrations in business analytics and supply chain management.
The SCMA Department has experienced significant growth in the past few years. To support our new programs, we have hired three new faculty members for the 2018-19 academic year: Shivam Gupta, Yingchao Lan and Peter Zhu. These new hires bring research interests and expertise in health care, agricultural operations, currency supply chains and procurement, and will teach courses in our business analytics and supply chain management programs. We look forward to highlighting their experience and accomplishments in future issues of this newsletter.
As you can see, these are exciting and dynamic times for the SCMA Department! In the years to come, I hope this newsletter will serve as an outlet to keep our alumni, industry partners and friends up-to-date on departmental happenings, including the activities and successes of our students, faculty and staff, as well as our new educational programs and opportunities. It is my sincere hope that this newsletter will also promote ongoing communication between the SCMA department and our many stakeholders. We welcome feedback of all kinds, including personal and professional updates from our alumni and curriculum and placement advice from our industrial partners.
As always, thanks for your support of our programs.
Jennifer