Jill Wilson Receives 2021 INFORMS Prize for the Teaching of OR/MS Practice
Wilson was formally honored during the 2021 INFORMS Annual Meeting on October 24-27
Northwestern Engineering’s Jill Wilson has received the 2021 INFORMS Prize for the Teaching of OR/MS Practice.
The award honors a teacher who has succeeded in helping students acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to be effective practitioners of operations research or the management sciences.
Wilson, professor of instruction and assistant chair in the McCormick School of Engineering’s Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences, was formally honored during the 2021 INFORMS Annual Meeting held from October 24-27.
The award’s Prize Committee recognized Wilson’s commitment to her students in helping them prepare for the job market.
Wilson’s research interests are integer programming and combinatorial optimization and the study of operations research education. In addition to advising, she teaches a number of undergraduate courses, including IEMS 394: IE Client Project Challenge, a one-quarter course that pairs industrial engineering juniors and seniors with organizations across a wide range of industries.
Wilson has also helped overhaul the industrial engineering department’s advising program to emphasize staff and faculty mentoring for undergraduate students. The system, first introduced during the 2017-18 academic year, encourages students to meet with a staff academic adviser to help make curriculum decisions — such as course selection or a four-year plan — while also meeting with a faculty adviser to discuss in-depth discipline and career-related questions.