Tag: graduate students

A team of operations and supply chain management graduate students from Washington University’s Olin Business School came in second place at the regional finals of the Supply Chain Finance Community’s Global Student Challenge on Thursday, March 9. The competition, held at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, was designed to promote awareness on the topic of supply chain finance and risk management.

“The Challenge engages participants to consider corporate strategy and business objectives and to manage cross-functional trade-offs in the value chain. Cross-functional understanding and collaboration are key components, as teams work together to turn their company around.” ~ globalstudentchallenge.org

The competition was based on a business simulation called The Cool Connection. According to the competition’s website, this simulation “provides insight in the complexities and inter-dependencies in supply chains operating under uncertain and volatile market conditions.”

The Olin team, composed of Xingxing Chen, Fasheng Xu, Yu Li, and Yunzhe Qiu, performed consistently well over multiple rounds, and stayed within reach of winning throughout the competition. Unfortunately, they were ultimately edged out in the final round of play. However, they placed ahead of strong competitors from Duke, USC, Maryland, and other top universities. They will find out in the coming weeks if they will advance to the global final to be held in the Netherlands in April.

On behalf of the Olin community, The Boeing Center for Supply Chain Innovation would like to congratulate the team on its excellent performance! All of them have sharpened their supply chain management skills through their participation in mini-consulting projects that BCSCI conducts with its member companies. Our students’ success at the Global Student Challenge serves as another validation of their capabilities.

By Evan Dalton

For more supply chain digital content and cutting-edge research, check us out on the socials [@theboeingcenter] and our website [olin.wustl.edu/bcsci]

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A Boeing Center digital production

Supply Chain // Operational Excellence // Risk Management

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One minute. That’s the time that it took me to register for classes this week. And while that might seem a little extreme and dramatic, it’s a necessary approach to getting into the classes I want. Anything more than a minute and you are most definitely wait-listed or never getting in all together.

How is that possible, one might ask? Well, there are a lot of students and limited seats. And when classes fill up in 45 seconds (yes, that happened), planning and constantly pressing refresh between 7:25 and 7:30 a.m. are the only way around that.

With that, let me give you some tips and tricks on how to win the bull race on registration morning:

• Create a schedule ahead of time: Again, this seems like a given but I know students that have waited until the morning of registration to really dig deep into the class offerings. They learned the hard way that waiting is a losing approach. So, don’t be a loser and spend time looking through the listing of classes, figuring out what days and times work for you, and making a schedule.
• Attend the advising sessions: I found this particularly helpful the first semester that I had to register since the program director (the infamous Jan Snow) not only has several class recommendations but can answer any questions you have related to graduation requirements. As an FYI, a PMBA student needs 54 credit hours to graduate.
• Use the registration worksheet: If you’re not using this, you’re doing registration wrong. To the point that I’ve included a screenshot below so that you know where to find the worksheet and what it looks like.
  

  Registration Worksheet. The answer to all your registration problems.

  What it does is allow you to bookmark classes while you’re working on the first bullet of this post (ha!) that will automatically populate in the registration tab the morning of registration. From there, all you do is go down the list and click “add course.” Boom! You register in a minute.

As a side note, I registered for my last semester this week and I couldn’t be happier. The first reason is to cross “Get an MBA” off my life to-do list. The second is to never have to stress about registration again.

Image: computer laptop keyboard HP Pavilion Entertainment PC, Carissa Rogers, Flickr Creative Commons