How Darla Moore Is Leading The Way In Management Science

The Darla Moore School of Business’s Management Science Department has much reason to celebrate this year.

“We’ve recently had two of the biggest milestones in the lifetime of our department this past year,” says Sanjay Ahire, Carolina Trustees Professor and dedicated co-director of the Moore School’s Operations and Supply Chain Center.

The first came in April, when Ahire and his team showcased how their department is shaping the future of operations and supply chain leadership and deservingly secured one of the most coveted global awards in all of management science: the 2024 Global INFORMS UPS Smith Prize for the best teaching in operations research and analytics and data science programs. The department faced stiff competition from the National University of Singapore Master of Science and Business Analytics and the University of Waterloo’s Department of Management Science and Engineering, both of which were also in the running.

CLIMBING THE GARTNER RANKINGS

“That is really the pinnacle of success of a Management Science Department — being recognized as the best group in the world,” Ahire says proudly.

The Darla Moore School’s second notable achievement this year was twofold. The school’s Operations and Supply Chain undergraduate program sustained its No. 3 place in the biennial Gartner ranking of undergrad programs, and moved up one place from No. 6 to No. 5 in Gartner’s graduate ranking — all the more impressive given they were evaluated alongside 70 other schools.

Ahire has co-designed and nurtured the undergraduate program from the ground up over the past eighteen years. “We started with a modest twenty-five or thirty students, and now we have over 800 students,” he shares. “It is faculty leaders’ innovative vision translated into real outcomes through sheer hard work and team effort.”

MORE THAN A CAPSTONE

Outside of curriculum, students are involved in many of Darla Moore’s clubs, workshops, and projects — but one of the department’s most treasured features is their immersive capstone course.

This is an experience for both undergraduates and graduates. Talk to anyone — be it faculty or students — and they’ll tell you there is nothing more immersive than this course.

They’ve forged partnerships with a variety of organizations like BMW, Delta Airlines, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, PwC, and Walmart just to name a few for their capstone projects, and impressively completed more than 350 over the past 16 years.

INNOVATIVE PROJECTS WITH MAJOR SOCIAL IMPACTS

Though it was quite robust before, Ahire says they elevated the capstone during the pandemic and shifted part of their focus to the nonprofit sector. Through this shift they’ve made a remarkable social impact.

Ahire highlights two projects in particular — one with Hollings Cancer Center of the Medical University of South Carolina and the other with Harvest Hope Food Bank.

Just how immersive is immersive? Throughout the project with Hollings Cancer Center, Ahire’s students tackled the mission-critical challenge of prioritizing life-saving cancer clinical trials. The team worked closely with cancer specialists, administrators, conducted a comprehensive benchmarking of the Cancer Center against several other Cancer Centers around the country, and even conducted epidemiological forecasting to understand future trends of nine major groups of cancers.

“How can you talk about helping cancer specialists prioritize cancer treatment trials to ensure maximum impact of their work if you don’t immerse yourself into various dimensions of such a complex domain?” says Ahire.

At Harvest Hope Food Bank, students optimized the food banks’ entire statewide logistics for picking up food donations from more than 500 stores and distributing them like Walmart, Kroger, and Dollar General and disturbing them — and it wasn’t easy. “We are talking about really complex problems here.”

The results? They’re now able to provide an incredible 11 million more meals annually to hungry South Carolinians. “Harvest Hope Food Bank is now sharing these insights with other food banks around the country, and can you imagine the impact this has on these students?” Ahire adds.

“These are the folks that are going to be walking into C-suites someday and they have this experience in the back of their mind. They will be the best representatives and the best executives because they will always have this social consciousness.”

STRONG PARTNERSHIPS AND HIGH-VALUE EXPERIENCES

The program has graduated more than 1,600 students with an extremely valuable credential — an industry-valued Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Certification that lands them an extra $5,000-$20,000 right out of the gate. It also helps these graduates rise in their careers much faster than their peers.

Ahire often says, “There are things in our lives that are too good to be true.” This time, he says, “This experience is both too good and true.”

Department Chair and Professor Sean Handley commends the Management Science Department.
“It takes a village to make these things work,” he says.

Within the department, they have forged both quality and quantity partnerships.

“Strong partnerships with industry are so critical, especially when it comes to keeping up with all that’s been rapidly changing in the supply chain over the past six or seven years,” says Handley.

A STRONG AND DIVERSE FACULTY TEAM

Maintaining these partnerships doesn’t come easily, but Handley says they’ve had so much success because they have a stable faculty. “We really feel ownership here. That’s a lot of what helps to sustain a program,” he says.

Another important ingredient for success, he says, is that the faculty aren’t solely traditional academics. Instead, a good number of them have had 20-30 years of rich real-world experience which they bring with them to the classroom.

“It’s a healthy mixture of those from the Ph.D. route and those from the practice route. Having this mix helps both sets of faculties grow together,” says Handley.

EXCELLENCE IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

The Moore School has firmly established their expertise in international business, maintaining their No. 1 international undergraduate business program in the U.S. for over a couple of decades now.

“Students really get the chance to hone their skills and look at how to operate on a global scale with cultural awareness, adaptability and sensitivity, working with people who are in different time zones and cultures and have different business styles,” notes Handley.

A PUSH TO INCREASE DATA PROFICIENCY

Mark Ferguson is the Management Science Department’s associate dean for accreditation and strategic planning, and he’s also a professor.

“Every job out there requires more data proficiency — even ones you wouldn’t typically think of like those that English majors go into. Everyone’s using more data now,” he says.

About eight years ago, the Management Science Department made a big push to increase the data proficiency of their nearly 6,000 undergrads by adding a business analytics concentration and a certificate which about a quarter of their students pursue in addition to their majors.

CLOSE PARTNERS WITH THE U.S. ARMY

The department’s graduate programs bring some of the industry’s biggest data challenges to the classroom.

At the executive level, their partnership with the Army’s Financial Management School in Fort Jackson has really transformed the way that finance officers operate. “We’ve trained all of the officers that go into the finance units in the Army and teach them how to more effectively use data,” says Ferguson.

“We’ve helped them to both sharpen their briefings and effectively tell stories using data visualization tools in replacement of slideshows and Excel sheets.” This has in turn helped commanders make more effective decisions.

ONE-YEAR MSBA PROGRAM TO SHARPEN SKILLS

Moore offers a one-year 30-credit hour Master of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA) program similar to the undergraduate program in the sense that students partake in the school’s signature experiential capstone project.

This degree is perfect for those who want to sharpen their data skills, and packs in all the essential business analytics skills that are in high demand across so many major sectors.

For those who aren’t in their undergraduate business program, this is the perfect way to top off their experience at USC. “This degree gives our non-business students the chance to come experience, and it really pays off,’ says Handley.

“In some cases, this has helped students to double their salaries,” says Ferguson.

SC MOORE STUDENT INSIGHTS

Turning to the students for their insights, Class of 2019 OSC grad Abigail Bangs appreciates the rigor of the program without the cutthroat atmosphere. “I feel like it takes real talent and leadership to create that kind of a successful culture for an entire department at a major state school,” she says.

She moved to Washington post-grad and notes, “I can say with very high confidence that the coursework that I did in the OSC program is what set me up for success with Amazon. Every single day I’m using something that I did in the OSC program.”

PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE FROM CAPSTONE PROJECTS

Bangs worked on a team project for Cummins for her capstone. “My role as a manager of a team is about interpreting data and making the right decisions for the business and understanding where we are making smart investments over time. I know I got those skills from learning how to actually use data to make business-oriented decisions vs just completing textbook math problems or just knowing theory,” she adds.

Also happy to share his thoughts on his alma mater is 2012 OSC grad Zach Greenberger. He’s now the CEO of Nexar — the world’s largest vision AI network for the physical world.

“I will always credit the OSC program with giving me the tools and experience to understand what I wanted to do in my career, and how to navigate different situations needed to be successful.

Greenberger joined the OSC program because I was passionate about seeing how tangible products come to life.

“I credit the Moore School of Business with the network that I have today — there are still some folks that I graduated with that I ultimately recruited to work by my side. I also continue to stay in touch with my professors, like Dr. Ahire, who is a great sounding board for situations that I run into and need to bounce ideas off of.”