Maths TCC Follow-on-Fund: A National Taught Course Centre in Operational Research (NATCOR): 2011-2016

在运筹学（OR）社区中，对扩大和深化英国数学科学博士研究的关注尤为强烈。因此，NATCOR自2006年成立以来一直享有非常强大的社区支持。NATCOR选择住宿课程模式进行交付，部分反映了对其充分参与参与者的有效性的信念，部分源于建立一个更大，更紧密联系的OR博士生社区的目标，以使英国在该主题上的研究长期受益。后一个目标已经惊人地实现了，一个强大的英国博士社区在OR的感觉现在是显而易见的，一个新成立的学生会议实际上是NATCOR的副产品。我们决定开设为期五周的课程，这意味着我们可以提供一个足够全面的课程，涵盖手术室的数学。课程的两年交付周期的选择是由一个实际的考虑决定的，即有足够大的学生群体（即一年级和二年级的博士生）来保证可行性。我们从学生、主管、更广泛的社区以及最近epsrc委托的DTZ报告中收到的反馈强烈表明，所有这些基本设计决策都被证明是正确的，就像有关NATCOR管理和行政结构的其他选择一样。我们不建议在下一个五年期间对《新核办法》的这些基本要素作出改变。此外，NATCOR将在2011-2016年期间继续从OR协会和史密斯研究所的支持中获利。最近使NATCOR更有效的步骤包括(i)引入为期一天的研讨会，以补充我们的两个核心课程并扩大其范围，（ii）扩展管理团队（执行委员会），现在包括十所大学的代表，（iii）与IMA合作，更广泛地提高对NATCOR的认识，（iv）启用一个全新的专业网站，以更有效地促进课程参与和方便课程注册。在2011-2016年期间，我们计划进一步加强NATCOR（除其他外），通过(i)通过尽可能广泛地招收学生来减轻学生人数下降的风险，（ii）对课程内容进行重大审查，（iii）促进对学生的正式评估，（iv）继续对所有条款进行严格评估。(v)继续降低成本，使该条款能够在未来五年内提供，费用水平与目前相比几乎没有变化，(v)评估NATCOR对学生博士教育和职业选择的影响，以及（vi）在2016年后努力实现可持续性。

The concern to broaden and deepen UK doctoral study in the mathematical sciences was felt with particular force within the Operational Research (OR) community. As a consequence, NATCOR has enjoyed a very strong level of community support since its foundation in 2006. NATCOR's choice of a residential course model for delivery in part reflected a belief in its effectiveness in fully engaging participants and in part stemmed from an aim to build a larger and more strongly connected community of PhD students in OR to the longer term benefit of UK research in the subject. This latter aim has been strikingly fulfilled and the sense of a strong UK PhD community in OR is now palpable, with a newly established student conference effectively a NATCOR spin-off. The decision to offer five week-long courses meant that we could offer a curriculum sufficiently comprehensive in its coverage of the mathematics of OR. The choice of a two-year delivery cycle for the curriculum was dictated by a practical concern to have a sufficiently large student population (ie, of first and second year PhD students) to guarantee viability. The feedback we have received from students, supervisors, the wider community and recently from the EPSRC-commissioned DTZ reports suggest strongly that all of these basic design decisions have been vindicated as have other choices concerning NATCOR's structure for management and administration. We do not propose to make changes to these basic elements of NATCOR for the upcoming five-year period. Further, NATCOR will continue to profit from the support of both the OR Society and the Smith Institute for the period 2011-2016. Recent steps to make NATCOR more effective have included (i) the introduction of one-day workshops to complement two of our core courses and broaden their scope, (ii) an extension of the management team (Executive Committee) which now includes representatives of ten universities, (iii) engagement with the IMA to raise awareness of NATCOR more broadly, (iv) the commissioning of a new professionally designed website to more effectively promote course participation and facilitate course registration. Over the period 2011-2016 we plan to further strengthen NATCOR (inter alia) by (i) mitigating the risk of a downturn in student numbers by recruiting from as wide a student population as possible, (ii) conducting a major review of course content, (iii) facilitating formal assessment of students, (iv) continuing to subject all provision to rigorous evaluation, (v) continuing to bear down on costs such that the provision can be offered over the next five years with fee levels which are little changed from those at present, (v) evaluating NATCOR's impact on students' doctoral education and career choices and (vi) working toward sustainability post 2016.