Simple auctions neglect the complex business constraints required by strategic sourcing. The Mars-IBM team created a procurement auction Web site 〈www.number1traders.com〉 that enables buyers to incorporate complex bid structures (such as bundled all-or-nothing bids and quantity-discounted bids) and business constraints into strategic-sourcing auctions. Outcomes in such auctions must lead to win-win solutions to sustain long-term relationships between procurer and suppliers. These factors are as important or more important than price. The Mars procurement auction Web site supports several alternatives to simple auctions that help match its needs as procurer and the capabilities of suppliers by incorporating optimal bid selection subject to constraints based on business rules in a dynamic environment. The ability to consider geographic, volume, and quality factors helps both parties. Feedback from participant suppliers has highlighted the benefits of time efficiency, transparency, and fairness. Although they reflect just one side of the benefits ledger, the monetary benefits to Mars (a $14 billion company) and to its suppliers are significant.
Today’s students need to become specialists in their profession while also recognizing the blinders that specialization brings—they need both disciplinary and meta-disciplinary learning. Today’s universities need to innovate by providing an education responsive to contemporary demands. They also need to show their relevance to the broader publics they serve. This article critically assesses a teaching initiative that brings together existing courses from multiple disciplines working for public-oriented clients to collaborate on closely related problems. The Michigan Engaging Community through the Classroom initiative was designed to enhance students’ learning by making them smarter, more pragmatic, and wiser while simultaneously enhancing the university’s public service. This article assesses the promise and the challenges of such a complex initiative and summarizes preliminary findings from student and community partner evaluations. The initiative has been challenging to implement because of the faculty dedication it requires. Developing robust evaluations of student learning has proven difficult as well. We have found that when student, faculty, and partner expectations are raised but not fulfilled, frustrations run high. When coordination and collaboration align, however, student learning can be enriched and public service enhanced. The article concludes by discussing lessons learned and presenting models of collaboration developed in turn.
Jennifer Wegner is an Assistant Director in Engineering Student Affairs at the University of Michigan, with responsibilities including student organization development, leading unit strategic objectives, and supporting university and college co-curricular initiatives. Her teaching and facilitation experiences include a mentorship/leadership course, LeaderShape R , first year seminars, and a university course on social psychology in residence settings. She is a member of the NASPA Center for Women National Board and co-founded the University of Michigan Women in Student Affairs chapter. Jennifer's research interests include the culture of busy, the intersection of women's higher education career ascension and professional development, and women's leadership development. She is currently a doctoral student at New England College and holds her M.Ed. in Higher Education Student Affairs from the University of Vermont and a B.A from Oakland University. Learning from Experiences: Examining Self-Reflections in Engineering Design Courses AbstractThis work assessed student reflective learning outcomes during a final Leadership/Mentorship course, after their participation in significant, experiential design projects in the University of Michigan's Multidisciplinary Design Program in the College of Engineering. Throughout the course, class discussions and assignments prompted students to reflect and examine their personal experiences in engineering design projects, their learning (both technical and professional), leadership, and team styles as well as understand group development and dynamics.A feature of the projects was the integration of students from diverse disciplines in engineering with other programs such as: Art, Architecture, Primary Sciences, Kinesiology, and Business. The diverse teams provided a rich environment but also created the complexity of multiple paradigms within the project teams. This course utilized the construct of Kolb's Experiential Learning Model 1 and Kavanagh's reflection exercises 2 to promote active reflection on students' team based engineering design project experiences. The in-class discussions and self-reflection based assignments not only helped students to more fully understand the technical aspects of engineering design, but also contributed to a greater understanding of working as a team and as competent, adaptive professionals.In a final reflection assignment, students described self-identified critical moments/milestones in their development (i.e., including design projects, classes, extracurricular activities, employment, etc.) and how the experience gained from those moments is important to their development as practicing professionals, effective mentors, and strong leaders. From these milestones, we identified common themes and experiences, including the impact on students' cognitive and professional identity development.Milestones were identified based on the forum for the experience such as classroom coursework, university-sponsored projects, extracurricular activities, stud...
has been a member of the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences at the University of Michigan since January 1990. His research focuses on numerical and mathematical analysis of problems in plasma kinetic theory, radiation transport and shielding, inverse problems, high energy density physics and uncertainty quantification. He has also served as Chair of the NRE Division of ASEE.
In the Multidisciplinary Design Program at the University of Michigan College of Engineering, teams of 5-7 engineers from multiple disciplines and academic years work together on multi-term engineering design projects. Annually, the program enrolls approximately 220 students on engineering design project teams. As we prepare to enter the fifth year of this program, we are seeking to improve the effectiveness of peer review feedback implemented in an efficient scalable manner. Previous to the study we utilized the Comprehensive Assessment for Team-Member Effectiveness (CATME) team peer evaluation tool 3-4 twice during the tenure of each team's project. We observed that our students were unable to sufficiently interpret the feedback from their peers, and their reactions to the feedback ranged from complete dismissal to an inability to integrate the feedback into their performance. As a result, we were not achieving our desired program outcomes: improved project-specific engineering design skills, professional behavior, and evidence of self-reflection. To address this, we have created and implemented an additional avenue for peer-to-peer anonymized feedback: a qualitative survey utilizing coded competencies. The purpose of this research is to evaluate this qualitative instrument in terms of overall effectiveness. This paper outlines insights and trends noted in the first year of implementation. ContextThe Multidisciplinary Design Program is an academic program that provides students from across the university an opportunity to develop and refine their engineering skills by working on significant, open ended, team-based engineering design. The program's educational goals are to produce students possessing deep technical skills and the ability to be systems thinkers; (2) capable and skilled in bringing creativity and innovation to design and problemsolving; (3) who are independent learners, able to reinvest themselves throughout their careers; and (4) who are effective communicators and team players in their professional and personal lives.The Multidisciplinary Design Program strives to bring multiple facets of professional practice into the academic setting engineering design instruction. A key message, and one explored further in this research, is that technical ability alone does not ensure success for an individual, a team, or the delivery of a professional project in the classroom or in the workplace. Beyond deep technical skills and knowledge, students and graduates must also have a set of key environment skills to succeed, such as teamwork, professionalism, core performance, and perhaps most importantly, self-awareness of one's strengths and shortcomings within these groups. To increase students' self-awareness, the program has implemented a peer performance evaluation process. The peer evaluation process is enacted twice in the duration of their project, and is required as a part of their academic requirements for the program. Students are evaluated only on their completion of the CATME survey and qua...
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