Improving the Undergraduate IEOR Programs at Columbia University

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The Industrial Engineering and Operations research (IEOR) department at Columbia University is reshaping its undergraduate curricula to better serve the needs of undergraduates seeking to enter the marketplace and to better serve undergraduates seeking to pursue a research career. Two major components of this planning grant are the redesign of the Engineering Management Science curriculum and the introduction of an undergraduate level Financial Engineering program. A critical part of these courses is the use of service learning projects as part of their curriculum. These projects are being identified with the help of an existing community service organization on campus engaged in serving Hispanic and African American populations. Service learning projects are being carried out by teams consisting of one or two senior students and a few freshmen students. Senior students have the opportunity to apply what they have learned and exercise leadership skills, while freshman students learn to work with heterogeneous teams and benefit from the knowledge and experience of the older students. The proposed activity addresses a range of important areas for improvement including curriculum improvement with respect to both content (finance, management, research) and pedagogical innovation (service learning, real-world problem focused, active learning). The overall benefits of the project would be to improve students' preparation for their future roles in society, to increase the diversity of those roles and to increase participation rates of underrepresented groups in the education.