The SC Moore Department of Management team accepting their award at the April 2024 INFORMS Analytics Conference in Orlando
The School of Business’s Darla Moore School of Management Science Department has many reasons to celebrate this year.
“We recently had two of the most important moments in the life of our department this past year,” says Sanjay Ahire, Carolina Trustee Professor and dedicated co-director of the Moore School’s Center for Operations and Supply Chain.
The first came in April, when Ahire and his team showed how their department is shaping the future of supply chain operations and leadership and deservedly secured one of the most coveted global awards in all of management science: the Global Award INFORMS UPS Smith 2024 for best teaching in operations research and analytics and data science programs. The department faced stiff competition from the National University of Singapore’s Master of Science and Business Analytics and the University of Waterloo’s Department of Management Science and Engineering, who were also in the running.
Sanjay Ahire accepts UPS 2024 Award
CLIMBING THE GARTNER RANKINGS
“This is truly the pinnacle of success for a Department of Management Science – being recognized as the best group in the world,” says Ahire proudly.
Darla Moore School’s second notable achievement this year was twofold. The school’s undergraduate operations and supply chain program maintained its no. 3 in Gartner’s biennial ranking of undergraduate programs and moved up one spot from no. 6 to #5 in Gartner’s alumni rankings—all the more impressive given that they were ranked against 70 other schools.
Ahire has co-designed and nurtured the undergraduate program from the ground up over the past eighteen years. “We started with a modest twenty-five or thirty students and now we have over 800 students,” he says. “It is the innovative vision of faculty leaders translated into real results through hard work and team effort.”
MORE THAN ONE CATCH
Outside of the curriculum, students are involved in many of Darla Moore’s clubs, workshops and projects – but one of the most prized features of the department is their immersion course.
This is an experience for both undergraduate and graduate students. Talk to anyone – faculty or students alike – and they’ll tell you there’s nothing more immersive than this course.
They have partnered with a variety of organizations such as BMW, Delta Airlines, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, PwC and Walmart just to name a few for their flagship projects and have impressively completed more than 350 over the past 16 years.
Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina
INNOVATIVE PROJECTS WITH GREATER SOCIAL IMPACT
Although it was quite strong before, Ahire says they raised the bar during the pandemic and shifted some of their focus to the non-profit sector. Through this change they have made a tremendous social impact.
Ahire highlights two projects in particular—one with the Medical University of South Carolina’s Hollings Cancer Center and the other with the Harvest Hope Food Bank.
How diver is diver? Throughout the project with Hollings Cancer Center, Ahire students tackled the mission-critical challenge of prioritizing life-saving cancer clinical trials. The team worked closely with cancer specialists, administrators, conducted a comprehensive comparison of the Cancer Center against several other cancer centers around the country, and even conducted epidemiological projections to understand future trends of nine major cancer groups.
“How can you talk about helping cancer specialists prioritize cancer treatment trials to ensure the maximum impact of their work if you don’t dive into the different dimensions of such a complex domain?” says Ahire.
At Harvest Hope Food Bank, students optimized all of the statewide food bank logistics for receiving food donations from more than 500 stores and delivering them to Walmart, Kroger and Dollar General and to worry about them — and it wasn’t easy. “We’re talking about really complex problems here.”
The results? They are now able to provide 11 million more meals a year to hungry South Carolinians. “Harvest Hope Food Bank is now sharing this knowledge with other food banks around the country, and can you imagine the impact this has on these students?” adds Ahire.
“These are the people who are going to walk into C-suites one day, and they have this experience at the back of their minds. They will be the best representatives and the best leaders because they will always have this social conscience.”
STRONG PARTNERSHIPS AND HIGH VALUE EXPERIENCE
The program has graduated more than 1,600 students with an extremely valuable credential—an industry-valued Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Certification that earns them an additional $5,000-$20,000 right out of the gate. It also helps these graduates grow in their careers much faster than their peers.
Ahire often says, “There are things in our lives that are too good to be true.” This time, he says, “This experience is both very good and true.”
Department Chair and Professor Sean Handley congratulates the Department of Management Science.
“It takes a village to make these things work,” he says.
Within the department, they have created partnerships in both quality and quantity.
“Strong partnerships with industry are so critical, especially when it comes to keeping up with everything that has changed rapidly in the supply chain over the last six or seven years,” says Handley.
A STRONG AND DIVERSE FACULTY TEAM
Maintaining these partnerships isn’t easy, but Handley says they’ve been so successful because they have a stable faculty. “We really feel ownership here. That’s a lot of what helps sustain a program,” he says.
Another important ingredient for success, he says, is that faculty are not just traditional academics. Instead, a good number of them have had 20-30 years of rich real-world experience that they bring with them to the classroom.
Professor Sean Handley – courtesy photo
“It’s a healthy mix of those from Ph.D. route and those from the practice route. Having that mix helps both groups of faculty grow together,” Handley says.
EXCELLENCE IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
The Moore School has firmly established its expertise in international business, maintaining their No. 1 international business university in the USA for more than several decades now.
“Students really have the opportunity to hone their skills and see how to operate on a global scale with cultural awareness, adaptability and sensitivity, working with people who are in different time zones and cultures and have different business styles. ,” notes Handley.
A PUSH TO INCREASE DATA PROFICIENCY
Mark Ferguson is the Department of Management Science’s associate dean for accreditation and strategic planning, and he is also a professor.
“Every job out there requires more data skills – even ones you wouldn’t normally think of as what English majors go into. Everyone is using more data now,” he says.
About eight years ago, the Department of Management Science made a big push to increase the data prowess of their nearly 6,000 graduate students by adding a business analytics concentration and a certificate that about a quarter of its students they attend in addition to their degrees.
CLOSE PARTNERS WITH THE US ARMY
The department’s graduate programs bring some of the industry’s biggest data challenges to the classroom.
At the executive level, their partnership with the Army School of Financial Management at Fort Jackson has truly transformed the way finance officers operate. “We train all the officers who go into the finance units in the military and teach them how to use data more effectively,” says Ferguson.
Associate Dean Mark Ferguson – courtesy photo
“We’ve helped them sharpen their briefings and effectively tell stories by using data visualization tools to replace slideshows and Excel sheets.” This has helped commanders make more effective decisions.
ONE YEAR MSBA PROGRAM TO SHARPEN SKILLS
Moore offers a 1-year, 30-hour Master of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA) program similar to the undergraduate program in that students participate in the school’s signature project.
This degree is perfect for those who want to sharpen their data skills and packs all the essential business analytics skills that are in high demand in so many key sectors.
For those not in their undergraduate business program, this is the perfect way to round out their USC experience. “This degree gives our non-business students the opportunity to gain experience, and it really pays off,” says Handley.
“In some cases, this has helped students double their wages,” says Ferguson.
STUDENT VIEWS SC MOORE
Turning to the students for their insights, OSC Class of 2019 Abigail Bangs appreciates the rigor of the program without the gritty atmosphere. “I feel like it takes real talent and leadership to create that kind of successful culture for an entire department in a large state school,” she says.
She moved to Washington after graduation and notes, “I can say with great confidence that the coursework I took in the OSC program is what prepared me for success with Amazon. Every day I’m using something I did in the OSC program.”
PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE FROM CAPSTONE PROJECTS
Bangs worked on a team project for Cummins for her stone. “My role as a manager of a team is about interpreting data and making the right decisions for the business and understanding where we’re making smart investments over time. I know I got those skills from learning how to actually use data to make business-oriented decisions versus completing textbook math problems or just knowing the theory,” she adds.
Also happy to share his thoughts on his alma mater is 2012 OSC graduate Zach Greenberger. He is now the CEO of Nexar – the world’s largest network of AI vision for the physical world.
“I will always credit the OSC program for giving me the tools and experience to understand what I wanted to do in my career and how to navigate the different situations necessary to be successful.
Greenberger joined the OSC program because I was passionate about seeing tangible products come to life.
“I credit the Moore School of Business for the network I have today – there are still some people I graduated with who I eventually recruited to work alongside me. I also continue to stay in touch with my professors, such as Dr. Ahire, which is a great sounding board for situations I run into and need to bounce ideas off of.”
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