Faculty Column Alumni Q&A Session
Food for Thought
Prof. Richard M. Felder in his article “What Matters in Educa-
tion”1 recommends “If you occasionally get into discussions about
education and would like to buttress your arguments with some-
thing a bit more substantial, I recommend that you keep within
easy reach a monumental work by Alexander Astin entitled What
Matters in College.” Since I planned on writing this article on the
topic of “Engineering Education,” I tried to get a copy the book.
Although our library has a copy, neither I nor the librarian I spoke
to was able to find it. So I left her my phone number and e-mail to
contact me when she did find it. Unfortunately, the deadline for
the article is today and I have yet to hear from her…I decided not
to let this obstacle to get in the way of me writing about what I
wanted. With Professor Felder’s article which includes very
thought-provoking quotes from the monumental book, I sat in
front of the keyboard…
In his book, Astin reports a positive correlation (at a signifi-
cance level p<0.0001) that is: “The quality of the college experi-
ence is strongly affected by student-faculty interactions. The fre-
quency with which students talk with professors outside class,
work with them on research projects, assist them in teaching, and
visit their homes, correlates with student grade-point average,
degree attainment, enrollment in graduate or professional school,
every self-reported area of intellectual and personal growth, sat-
isfaction with quality of instruction, and likelihood of choosing a
career in college teaching [pp.383-384].” No surprises here. How-
ever, let me emphasize that there is no party at my house next
Friday!
The next correlation that caught my attention is not as much fun
as a Friday night bash at a professor’s house. Felder writes “A
disturbing finding is that majoring in engineering correlates nega-
tively with students' satisfaction with the quality of their instruction
and overall college experience and positively with feeling over-
whelmed and depressed.” Clearly, these findings indicate that the
climate characterizing the typical institution with a strong empha-
sis on engineering is not ideal for student learning and personal
development. [pp. 360-361].
Hmmm…so what are we doing wrong? Why are our students
feeling overwhelmed and depressed? Are we not interacting with
our students enough?! Maybe I should consider a block party on
Friday….
Another conclusion from Astin’s book which pertains directly to
our University is that “Attending a college whose faculty is heavily
research-oriented increases student dissatisfaction and impacts
negatively on most measures of cognitive and affective develop-
ment. Attending a college that is strongly oriented toward student
development shows the opposite pattern of effects [p. 363].”
Volume 5,
Considering all the correlations, as faculty of a Research I insti-
tution, we must always remember that the needs of our students Spring 2010
can never be second priority. Having said this, there are many
things students must also keep in mind. As the saying goes,
Inside thi
“You can take the horse to the water but you cannot make him
drink.” So let’s hope that more thirsty students show up to class Socc
than those with their plastic water bottles in hand. In the process, Modeling
we may even cut down on pollution and climate change.■
IMSE at IN
By Dr. Ali Yalcin
1
 Felder, Richard, "What Matters in College."   Spring Lect
  Chem. Engr. Education, 27(4), 194‐195 (Fall 1993)  IMSE Professor
A Newsletter from Student Chapter of INFORMS @ IMSE, USF
The following is a Q&A session was held with Mr. Ian Elius, an
alumnus of USF-IMSE (graduated December 2005).
Could you tell us which company you currently work for,
your position, and briefly what your responsibilities are?
Pilgrim Software, Inc. (www.pilgrimsoftware.com), consultant.
Roles and responsibilities include:
 Engagement Manager - single point of contact for projects,
scheduling tasks and resources for successful project com-
pletion;
 Solution Architect - design solution based on client business
processes, functional and technical requirements;
 Consultant - provide full range of implementation services to
execute solution design.
What were the motivating factors for you to join the health
care industry?
There were two major factors which led to a career in the health
care industry: First, a desire to make a more direct impact on
human health and therefore on the quality of life for individuals. It
is anticipated that this notion may be applied to all industries, but
the immediacy is readily observed in healthcare. Second, the
challenge of being in an environment on the leading edge of
technological innovation and therefore needing to constantly
balance the (seemingly) opposing forces of compliance and qual-
ity.
What is the course that you have found most applicable in
your career so far?
A truly challenging question! I have utilized many notions and
techniques from all the courses that I have taken to solve various
problems that have surfaced over time. From a modeling per-
spective, I would select Multivariate Optimization as the one
which has been applied more directly.
What advise can you give to the current IMSE graduate stu-
dents?
Be narrow in focus and broad in application. My observation is
that the key to success lies more in the ability to adapt than in
any other single factor, due to the pace of change in the world.
This interview was carried out by Wilkistar Otieno (OR Times Editor) via email.
INFORMS USF would like to thank Mr. Ian Elius for his contribution to the OR
Times.
Issue 1
s issue:
mma .……………
……….2
th e Pr is oners’ Dile
er and ……….3
Delivery……
Ri sk in Health Care 4
……………………….
Sa n Di eg o………………………
FORMS …….4
…………………………
e Se ri es …………………………
ur
Rocha’s Corner
Diving in soccer and the recent financial crisis: The Prisoners’ Dilemma connection
First of all, I apologize to all non-soccer fans for using this example, but please bear with me. In soc-
cer, sometimes players get entangled while disputing the ball. Some of these entanglements end up
in small quarrels where two players face each other and everything indicates they will end up hitting
each other. Often times, it is only bluster and they just slightly head-butt each other. Now, I want you
to think on the following four penalization scenarios right after this mild mutual head-butting. 1) Since
it was a mild head-butt, both players stand there and do not make a bigger fuss because the referee
is already aware of the quarrel: both will get a yellow card; 2) one player decides to dive (falling to
the floor on purpose, pretending an injury) thinking that if he falls and the other player does not then
he will at most get a yellow card while the other player will get a red card (gets kicked out of the
game); 3) same scenario as (2) but vice versa (interchange the roles of the players in scenario 2);
and 4) both players want to take advantage of the situation and both decide to dive, the ref believes both used unneces-
sary violence and both get a red card. As a big soccer fan I have seen scenario 4 repeated over and over again.
The soccer situation I just described is a typical case of prisoners’ dilemma, a particular type of game in Game Theory.
Prisoners’ dilemma is described as a situation in which if players act rationally, responsibly (such as in scenario 1), a
better cooperative outcome is achieved. However, acting in this rational, responsible way leaves each player vulnerable
to exploitation by the other player (scenarios 2 and 3). What happens in the end is that this fear of exploitation moves the
players to actually choose the non-responsible action, leading to the worst outcome for both (scenario 4).
It turns out that some writers such as John Cassidy from the New
Yorker believe that the current financial crisis can be explained us-
ing the prisoner’s dilemma: “If Merrill Lynch sets up a hedge fund to
invest in collateralized debt obligations, or some other shiny new
kind of security, Morgan Stanley will feel obliged to launch a similar
fund to keep its wealthy clients from defecting. A hedge fund that
eschews an overinflated sector can lag behind its rivals, and lose its
major clients. So you can go bust by avoiding a bubble. As Charles
Prince [former Citygroup chairman] and others discovered, there’s
no good way out of this dilemma. Attempts to act responsibly and
achieve a cooperative solution cannot be sustained, because they
leave you vulnerable to exploitation by others. If Citigroup had sat
out the credit boom while its rivals made huge profits, [Charles]
Prince would probably have been out of a job earlier. The same
goes for individual traders at Wall Street firms. If a trader has one
bad quarter, perhaps because he refused to participate in a bubble,
the results can be career-threatening.”
Cassidy basically implies that Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and their ilk felt compelled to invest in these “shiny new
kind of securities” and not to lag behind, thus inflating the bubble and ultimately leading their companies (not the execu-
tives; these were compensated lavishly for their “management”) and the country to the worst possible outcome.
The question is, then, are we doomed to get caught in more of these financial crises due to our human nature (the fear of
exploitation of each player in the examples)? Possibly. However, when you look at game theory, there are ways to avoid
falling in those scenarios with the worst possible outcomes. This is achieved by tinkering with the payoffs (the penaliza-
tions on the soccer example and the profits made by Merril Lynch during the bubble). How do you do this tinkering?
Regulation is the key. In the soccer example, even though the regulation is clear, referees apply it unevenly and some-
times get deceived by the theatrics of the players. If refs were sharper when identifying the diving behavior of the play-
ers, i.e., players caught diving get a red card, then the penalization (payoffs) would get modi-
fied and the irresponsible behavior is discouraged. In the financial sector example, the regula-
tion will put limits on the amount of investment in collateralized debt obligations or “shiny new
securities” that financial institutions can make or even will tax the profits from these operations.
Regulation in this case will change the payoffs (profits) of these actions for the players and,
hopefully, irresponsible behavior will be, as in the soccer example, discouraged. ■

By: Patricio Rocha

PhD. Candidate

2
 Research Corner
Modeling Safety in the Delivery of Health Care

Delivery of health care has been described as a high-risk process given the alarming estimates of
preventable adverse outcomes. For example, the 44,000 to 99,000 estimated deaths in hospitals
in the US has been compared to the death toll of one jet plane crashing each day. This estimate
does not include other events that do not result in death but still affect the patient and increase
the need for care (i.e. hospital-acquired infections). Additionally, there are even more errors that
go unnoticed because they do not have direct consequences for the patient (such as almost giv-
ing the wrong medicine to a patient). Nevertheless, all of these events still have an impact on the
organization since they imply some rework (getting the right dose to the patient) and waste, and
thus they increase the cost of care.
The health care community has agreed to cut their health care costs and enhance their quality
standards to provide value-centered health care to U.S. citizens. A critical factor at the core of health care service quality
and cost is patient safety, which is defined as the prevention of harm to patients caused from failures in the health care
system itself. Since the late nineties, preventable medical injuries have been recognized as a major cause of death and
disability. Today, most American health care institutions have patient safety programs that manage risks primarily
through the analysis of incident reports and the implementation of interventions.
The aim of this research is to develop a systematic methodology to model safety performance of a health care service
system, evaluate the effectiveness of solutions, and guide allocation of resources and efforts to enhance patient safety.
We are concerned with using available patient-safety data to measure and monitor the exposure of patients to errors and
adverse events to aid in hospital-wide risk management decisions.
Part of the difficulty in enhancing care outcomes quality lies in that these systems are dynamic and socio-technical com-
plex. In such settings, traditional statistical quality control and risk management tools have limited applicability, mainly
because of the unpredictability of human behavior. In the case of adverse outcomes and errors, it is practically impossi-
ble to implement an automatic tracking system to gather a sufficiently large and unbiased sample to calculate a probabil-
ity.
Our proposed methodology will be based on a systems view of health care service processes, where metrics for “safety”
are the criterion to evaluate decision alternatives, constrained by the dynamics of the system. We use qualitative, biased
incident reports to estimate risk parameters, in a systematic way. In general, incident reports can provide information
about risk and safety however, there is the need for the development of appropriate methods to analyze them.
The proposed framework will:
 provide a systematic method to monitor the performance (in terms of safety) of delivery systems,
 allow for identification of areas that predominantly contribute to risk,
 support the criteria to evaluate proposed solutions,
 provide metrics to monitor the performance of implemented interventions,
 and serve as the core of a decision support model to evaluate and prioritize potential solutions.
This research is relevant in risk management by facilitating the creation of alert systems that point to areas in need of
immediate attention; and providing a platform for the evaluation and monitoring of the effectiveness of patient safety in-
terventions. In particular, we will provide an analysis and decision support tool for patient safety programs to manage
safety. As a consequence, it will help reduce adverse events, enhance patient and provider’s well being, reduce cost,
and increase health care value. This research is intended for application in health care service systems at different levels
of influence (units, departments, hospitals); however, its foundation will be transferable to other socio-technical service
systems. ■
By: Laila Cure
PhD. Candidate

Coming this spring:

This INFORMS@ USF initiative is our opportunity to interact with IE graduate students from other IE programs. Our
chapter is interacting with the University of Florida INFORMS chapter to host the first graduate exchange during this
Spring.

3
 IMSE at INFORMS 2009, San Diego
INFORMS @ USF and its members were awarded the Magna Cum Lade award, Wilkistar Otieno was awarded the
Judith Lieberman, and Dr. José Zayas-Castro was awarded the Moving Sprit award as our chapter advisor.
Volume 5, Issue 1

On Feb. 15th 2010, the USF-INFORMS Student Chapter invited Dr.

Panos Pardalos, Distinguished Professor of Industrial & Systems
Engineering Department at UF, for a research talk on the critical
nodes detection problem in networks. Recent work in detecting criti-
Spring 2010

cal nodes in networks based on integer linear programming was re-

viewed followed by a discussion on new heuristic techniques to
solve the problem. The critical node detection problem finds applica-
tions in supply chain networks, epidemic control and identification of
influential individuals in social networks, brain research, and tele-
communication networks. ■
By: Athina Brintaki
PhD. Candidate

IMSE
4202 E. Fowler Ave. ENB 118 Editors:
Tampa FL, 33620
Tel: (813) 974-5591 • Meredith Bounds • Laila Cure•
Fax: (813) 974-974-5953

informs@eng.usf.edu http://informs.eng.usf.edu