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Understanding how to build relationships between universities, organizations, and community colleges could encourage more inter-organizational work through the formation of intentional and strong positive relationships. In this work in progress paper, we discuss how we fostered a research collaboration between faculty, administrators, and researchers at two community colleges, two universities, and several professional welding organizations. The intent of the overarching research project is to study and improve the educational experiences, outcomes, and career pathways of welding technology (WT) students. During the facilitation of this project, the team has successfully cultivated and leveraged relationships and partnerships to help inform the study. As a result, the Project Team recognizes the importance of capturing how we develop and leverage these relationships to address project needs and produce deliverables. The formation of the relationships between researchers, practitioners, employers and professional organizations is rarely examined and documented in technological education. Thus, this work allows us to capture and share the theoretical and practical knowledge about how we have developed, maintained, and leveraged these partnerships with engaged leadership from our community college principal investigators. In this work, we present: (1) a brief review of literature about team science and (2) best practices related to our process of cultivating and leveraging relationships between the Project team members, faculty and industry employers. This work provides theoretical and practical knowledge about partnership development in Advanced Technological Education (ATE) projects that can provide critical insights about creating and leveraging partnerships between researchers, faculty, and practitioners.
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On the use of operations research and management in public education systems
The tutorial explores a series of questions related to the use of operations research (OR) and operations management (OM) to improve public education systems. These questions are: (i) In the past century, how have changes in education policy prompted new OR/OM areas of research? (ii) What are the current research areas of central importance in education operations? and (iii) How can researchers interested in studying education operations establish partnerships with districts, schools, or education companies? Drawing on key papers from the literature and our experiences, as well as experiences of other researchers and practitioners who have engaged in partnerships, we answer these questions and highlight emerging areas of research in public education. We trace the history of OR/OM research in education chronologically, starting from the 1950s, and discuss the legal, political, economic, technological, and social events that have marked major shifts in public education provision. Though still developing at the time of publication, we discuss COVID-19 and its tremendous impact on education provision. Our broad review explores the links between issues in education over time and OR/OM research interests, methods, and technology.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1727744
- PAR ID:
- 10275814
- Editor(s):
- Druehl, C; Elmaghraby, W.
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Operations researchmanagement science
- ISSN:
- 0030-3658
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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