My perspectives reflect my experience as an industrial and systems engineering professor in a College of Engineering at an R1 institution. I have mentored many assistant professors, shepherded several tenure cases to completion as a department chair, and served on UW-Madison’s physical sciences divisional tenure committee.

What follows is a translation of those promotion and tenure panel notes into a cheeky and honest piece of unsolicited advice. 

How to Win Tenure and Influence Letter Writers: 

One professor’s unsolicited advice on how to survive and thrive on the tenure track

Protect your sleep.

If I could pass along only one piece of advice for tenure-track survival, getting adequate sleep would be it. The benefits of sleep have been proven by decades of medical research, whereas the rest of my advice is based entirely on my journey–the choices I made, the lessons I learned, and the wisdom I gathered from colleagues along the way. 

Understanding the expectations for promotion and tenure is half the battle. Find the written guidelines in your department, college, and university. Read them carefully. Then read them again. Attend your university’s tenure workshops. Ask questions to your colleagues, mentors, and department chair.

As soon as you can, download your university’s official CV template. Arrange your CV in that format and fill it out as you go so you never have to reconstruct five years of your professional life in one long, draining weekend.

There will always be unwritten expectations. As a seasoned professor who has mentored many faculty members, I have strived to clarify these hidden rules and provide structures that support transparency, but there is still a lot of work to do. Listen to your mentors, but also take their advice with a grain of salt. When in doubt, focus on what is under your control.

Appreciate the time you have today.

Enjoy the freedom and the relatively few constraints on your time as a graduate student or an assistant professor who is shielded from heavy service. Right now, you may not understand how unconstrained you actually are. But trust me, in five years you will look back at your old calendar and realize how much time you actually had to think. You have more time for research today than you will at any other point in the rest of your career. Plan accordingly.

Don’t feel bad if you don’t know how to build and run a research group on day one. The best faculty mentors I know have made mistakes and are still learning and growing as PIs and mentors. 

Set yourself up for success by drafting a Lab Compact for your graduate students and mentees. Communicate expectations early, so they know exactly how to grow as scholars.

Get out of your office.

Be present in your own department and be a generous colleague, but never forget that your tenure case may rest entirely in the hands of five to ten external experts who will write your tenure letters. Make a plan to meet them. 

Go to conferences. Shake hands in the hallways. Initiate conversations in the elevator. Volunteer to organize technical sessions at conferences. Do not let the first time they see your name be the day your tenure dossier arrives in their inboxes.

Manage your time and projects.

Understand that your time is a finite budget. Learn to say “no” with grace. 

More importantly, learn how to make time for what’s important to you so you can reach your long-term goals. It’s incredibly easy to agree to a task six months from now because your calendar looks empty today, but that future version of you will be completely overbooked. Either do it soon, or say no. 

Be a considerate colleague. Submit your referee reports on time. 

Equally importantly, know when to stop editing a paper. You must get high-quality work into the pipeline, so submit that manuscript as early as you can. 

To build a solid portfolio of published papers by the time you go up for tenure, you must have several papers under review plus more in the pipeline at all times. This is a lot to juggle, but it becomes much more manageable once you give yourself permission to accept that not every paper needs to be a paradigm-shifting masterpiece.

Treat “Future You” as your most important collaborator.

Finish your work for the day in a way that makes it easy to pick up the following morning. Maintain a logical file structure, use a project management app, and meticulously document your code. Future you is just you without the context you have now. Treat that future version of yourself with compassion. Don’t overbook them–future you only has 24 hours in a day and needs eight hours of sleep.

Have a growth mindset for yourself. 

You will be doing many things for the very first time in the coming years. You will get better at all of them. Give yourself grace. You will be a completely different and far more capable person when you go up for tenure.

Chart a course that’s genuinely yours.

Your journey will be long, and despite having to clear hurdles like tenure, it’s a race only against yourself. A career arc that is authentic to you is priceless.

Finally, maintain a hobby. Don’t fall into the trap of delaying your life until after the tenure vote. You won’t magically have more free time after tenure; you will actually be busier than ever. Play the long game and plan for sustainable, healthy life habits right now.

And seriously, protect your sleep.

—

The article was inspired by Mary Schmich’s legendary “Wear Sunscreen” column in the Chicago Tribune, from which I borrow its tone and rhythm. The writing, insights, and academic spin are entirely my own.

At the start of every semester, I have a habit of proactively setting up processes that make the months ahead run more smoothly and prevent problems. Here are 7 steps I take at the beginning of each semester.

• I create email shortcuts (Quick Steps in Outlook) to draft an email for my teaching assistants and/or graders. The draft email contains their emails, a subject line that starts with the course number (e.g., “ISYE 313: “), and their first names to make drafting messages quick and consistent. I also delete the email shortcuts I no longer need.
• I “pin” folders for Quick access in my computer’s file explorer (on Windows), including the folders associated with the courses I teach to make navigating files faster.
• For each course I teach, I create two files on Google Drive to keep me organized over the course of the semester.
  • The first is a calendar summary of each course period in a spreadsheet, summarizing what is covered in class, in-class activities and case studies, homework deadlines, and more. It keeps me and my team organized and on the same page.
  • The second is a weekly announcement template that summarizes the following week’s lecture topics, discussion topics, readings, and homework deadlines. I include study tips and relevant news articles when appropriate. I reserve 30 minutes on my calendar each week to update and post the weekly announcement on the course management system.
  • I “star” both of these files in Google Drive for easy access, which pins them to the starred files list. I bookmark my Google Drive starred files, so it is incredibly quick to open these files.
  • I block times in my calendar for time to post the weekly announcement on the course management system, office hours, and team meetings.
• I maintain a template for grader and teaching assistant expectations. I update each file and share them with my graders and teaching assistants before the semester begins, asking them if they have any concerns or questions about the expectations. I find that conveying expectations at the beginning makes the semester run smoothly.
• In Microsoft Office, I update my “Favorites” files that I will regularly use during the semester. These files include files needed for teaching and those for Badger Bracketology (e.g., college and National Football League football spreadsheets in the fall semester). The files that are perennial Favorites in Word and Excel include:
  • My CV
  • My bio
  • Department letterhead
  • My travel spreadsheet
• I maintain a lab compact that I review, update, and share with my research group. My lab compact is a living document that evolves every year and supports my practice of conveying expectations as a process, not a one-time event.
• Finally, I ensure that my teaching tote is stocked with a laptop display converter, a pen, extra blank paper, and a working dry erase marker so I’m always prepared on teaching days.

What are your quick start tips for starting the semester?

Radhika Kulkarni gave a memorable keynote talk entitled “From Models to Smarter Decisions: Harnessing OR + AI,” where she discussed how operations research (OR) can not only remain relevant in artificial intelligence but also lead to innovations through OR/AI collaborations that neither field could contribute alone.

Radhika also organized a stream on AI, and I organized a session in this stream entitled, “Grand Challenges at the Artificial Intelligence / Operations Research Interface.” The session had talks by Ramayya Krishnan, Benjamin Legros, Tho Le, Thibault Vidal, and myself. Multiple talks touched on the workforce transformation that will result from AI, including insights and opportunities for operations research to help define new roles.

GLOW – Global Leadership in Operational Research for Women, a new IFORS initiative, kicked off with a fantastic interactive event, reception, and set of sessions. According to its website:

The mission of GLOW is to connect, empower and promote women in Operations Research (OR) from around the globe by addressing common challenges, facilitating collaboration, and increasing visibility, recognition, and leadership opportunities for women in the profession.

Visit the GLOW website for more information and to join GLOW.

I was riveted by Georgios Paschos‘s keynote about Amazon’s fulfillment optimization and Karen Smilowitz‘s plenary talk “Transportation Research for Social Impact in a Changing World” where she discussed how operations research can make a difference, using examples from her research in humanitarian logistics and marathon planning.

History session. I was invited to give a talk in a session in the “Moments in the History of OR and IFORS“ stream about international activities during my term as INFORMS President in 2023. I discussed the INFORMS international membership (Did you know that a quarter of INFORMS members are based outside of the US?), INFORMS’ recent international strategy, and the previous IFORS conference in Santiago, Chile that was held in 2023 (read my blog post for a summary).

IFORS was attended by 2200 people from more than 70 countries, showcasing how global and vibrant the OR community is. I greatly appreciate the hard work and dedication of the organizing and program committees in bringing an incredible event together with attendees from throughout the world. I look forward to the next IFORS conference, which will be held in Calgary in 2029.

Until then, auf Wiedersehen, Vienna!

Throughout the evolution of industrial engineering, efficiency has not been pursued for its own sake; it has been pursued in service of human flourishing. That ambition has always demanded one thing above all: optimizing the integration of human and system. 

I have three comments in response to the article.

First, industrial engineering has not always prioritized human flourishing. Critics of Taylorism and other early industrial engineering approaches argued that they treated humans like machines, not people, through surveillance, reduced autonomy, and repetitive work. Even Ford’s assembly lines did so by requiring workers to keep up with moving assembly lines. The field quickly moved past this by advancing human factors and human-systems integration. For the past century, contributing to human flourishing is absolutely central to industrial engineering’s legacy.

Second, industrial engineering is unfortunately a well-kept secret because its achievements are often invisible. IE’s focus on processes and systems means that its contributions are often hidden in the background. When industrial engineers succeed people experience shorter waits, safer systems, more reliable supply chains, and better healthcare. Because those improvements are systemic rather than tangible, they can be difficult to recognize and appreciate. This article succeeds in bringing those achievements to the forefront.

Finally, industrial engineers are often unfairly accused of caring only about efficiency. This is far from the truth. Like all engineers, and perhaps more than most, industrial engineers balance multiple criteria including quality, safety, and resilience alongside efficiency and productivity. I believe that IE’s future will be defined by how we define what is worth optimizing, and it’s my expectation that IE will continue to be resoundingly human.

Reminder: Celebrate and promote industrial engineering on Industrial Engineering Day, which returns on September 14, 2026. (#ISEday, #ISEday2026)

The image at the top of this post shows Ford Motor Company’s assembly line at the Highland Park Plant. Source: ford.com

I anticipated reading Inside the Box: How Constraints Make us Better by David Epstein. I read Epstein’s previous books and admire how he connects and synthesizes seemingly disparate concepts into a compelling narrative. While the constraints he writes about in this book do not refer to constraints in the mathematical optimization sense, the insights resonated with me as someone who thinks in terms of objectives, constraints, and process optimization.

One unexpected surprise was encountering operations research in the book. Epstein discusses UPS’s ORION project, which was awarded the 2016 Franz Edelman Award. ORION is an outstanding example of how operations research and analytics can make a difference and create practical value. I was thrilled to see such a prominent and positive representation of OR.

I recently finished Behemoth by Joshua Freeman. The Wisconsin Drives Manufacturing Summit in Green Bay, WI last month inspired me to learn more about the history of manufacturing given its importance to the state economy. Behemoth was my first choice, and it was an excellent one. It chronicles the history of large factories, from the first factories in England in the eighteenth century (Lombe’s Mill and Cromford Mill) through Foxconn City and the giant factories of China. I was especially interested in Freeman’s discussion of scientific management, labor reorganization, and the role factories played in shaping modernity.

Proof: The Art and Science of Certainty by Adam Kucharski delves into how we know what we know through geometry, statistics, and medical research. While Kucharski is trained as an epidemiologist, he uses examples from different fields to explore topics in epistemology and the search for truth. Ultimately, he acknowledges that certainty is elusive and instead dissects how we gather and evaluate evidence while balancing competing tradeoffs.

I read Ethics in the Real World by Peter Singer (the updated and expanded edition) at the suggestion of Margaret Brandeau, who recommended it in her plenary talk at the 2025 INFORMS Annual Meeting. I was intrigued by this suggestion because I enjoy teaching engineering ethics. The book is composed of 90 essays, each of which is 4-5 pages long and address a challenging topic of our time. While I often didn’t agree with Singer, the essays pushed me out of my comfort zone and gave me a lot to ponder. I had trouble putting the book down and recommend it without reservation.

I make reading books about artificial intelligence a priority. I enjoyed AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor more than most. It focuses on machine learning and prediction as well as generative AI. I expected to read a book only summarizing AI failures, but it was actually more even-handed. What made this book effective was how they authors clearly explain both the strengths and weaknesses of AI. I found the book practical and insightful, and I will be recommending it to students in my “AI in Systems” course this coming fall.

My next read is The Irrational Decision: How We Gave Computers the Power to Choose for Us by Benjamin Recht, which explores the history of computational decision-making that shapes modern life. I was lucky enough to see Ben discuss one of the chapters at a recent seminar at UW-Madison, where he discussed how computational tools have led to automated decision-making. A couple of years earlier, he gave a fascinating and thoughtful talk about the emergence of statistics in the 20th century, reflecting how drawing conclusions from data has evolved. His talks blended computer science, data science, history, and philosophy in a way that was extremely refreshing and thought-provoking.

One of my favorite moments came during his visit to the UW-Madison optimization seminar series a couple of years ago. I asked a question after his talk that made a direct reference to Aristotle. I had long wanted an excuse to bring up Aristotle during an optimization research talk, and I was delighted to finally check that item off my academic bucket list.

Between Ben’s curiosity and his book’s focus on the intersection of computation, decision-making, and human judgment, I’m looking forward to reading The Irrational Decision.

What are you reading this summer?

Related posts:

• My book recommendations from 2019 and 2014
• David Epstein’s Substack “Range Widely”
• Ben Recht’s Substack “arg min”

On the one hand, demand for ISEs is expected to surge in the coming years. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts that demand for industrial engineers will grow faster than every other engineering discipline. The field is consistently ranked one of the top engineering careers, and its impact contributes trillions of dollars to the global economies while also improving the quality of life and saving lives.

On the other, the number of undergraduate degrees in ISE have dropped precipitously in recent years, and our share of engineering graduates is shrinking.

ISE is at a crossroads. The world needs ISE more than ever, yet the talent pipeline is at risk. This contradiction was the central theme of my keynote. I believe we can address these issues by better telling our story to inspire future generations to pursue careers in ISE, and I challenged attendees to join me in addressing this challenge.

The IISE podcast Problem Solved provided a preview of my keynote (listen the first 6 minutes of the podcast below).

In the keynote, I discussed the role of research innovation in creating a “virtuous cycle” starting with studying emerging application areas that results in new theory, then practical, real-world impact, which then broadens the field by attracting new talent.

I discussed two of my recent papers in emerging application areas in operations research that were published in IISE journals. In the first paper (White and Albert 2025), I discussed how to evaluate policies for combating the opioid epidemic by routing individuals with opioid use disorder to treatment.

In the second (Schmidt and Albert 2024), we ask how industrial engineering and operations research methodologies can inform the siting of ballot drop boxes. This question resulted in a new integer programming model that balances cost, convenience to voters, and impact on election officials. The resulting methodology provides a practical tool that can be used in real-world settings as well as important insights for policy.

In the keynote I argued that we must do a better job communicating what we do as ISEs. Good research alone is not enough. We need to repackage our research advances into compelling stories that resonate with students, policymakers, and the public.

This was the idea behind Industrial and Systems Engineering Day (ISE Day), launched in 2025. The ISE Day initiative aimed to amplify our collective voices is attract the next generation. When ISE Day was launched in 2025, it brought together participants from 23 countries across five continents to share their ISE stories and showcase the field’s impact on the world.

The next ISE Day will be celebrated on September 14, 2026. It is an opportunity for us to raise awareness of what we offer the world and expand our global reach. I encourage you to RSVP to the LinkedIn ISE Day event if you have not done so already, and share the event with your network.

Industrial and systems engineering matters more than ever. We must tell our story clearly and often. I challenge ISEs everywhere to join me in spreading the word.

Watch the keynote talk below

Resources and references:

• Video snippet previewing my talk on LinkedIn
• Video snippet from my keynote
• White, V.M., and Albert, L.A. 2025. Evaluating diversion and treatment policies for opioid use disorder. IISE Transactions on Healthcare Systems Engineering, 15(3), 241 – 268. https://doi.org/10.1080/24725579.2025.2523273
• Schmidt, A.P. and Albert, L.A. 2024. Locating ballot drop boxes. IISE Transactions 56(4), 424 – 436. https://doi.org/10.1080/24725854.2023.2213754
• Karwowsky, W., Salvendy, G., Albert, L., Kim, W. C., Denton, B., Dessouky, M., Dolgui, A., Duffy, V., Kumara, S., Li, J., Madni, A.M., McGinnis, L., Rouse, W., Shamma, J., Shen, M., Simchi-Levi, D., Swann, J., Tiwari, M.K. 2025. Grand challenges in industrial and systems engineering. International Journal of Production Research 63(4), 1538-1583. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2024.2432463

ISE Day information:

• Official ISE Day website
• ISE Day is celebrated on September 14 annually (except when it falls on a weekend, when it is celebrated on the following Monday)
• Use hashtags #ISEday and #ISEday2026

I started Punk Rock Operations Research on April 2, 2007. Fun fact: I published two posts on that first day. The first post introduced the blog (it’s “Hello World” moment). The second post, the first “real” post on Punk Rock OR, was a post about Al Blumstein entitled “Murder and the Operations Researcher.” Al has truly inspired me throughout my career.

When I visited Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy in 2018, where Al was a professor and former dean, I gave a talk in the Alfred Blumstein Classroom. It meant so much to me that I took a picture of it (see below). At that time, this is what I wrote about Al Blumstein:

I saw Dr. Al Blumstein of Heinz College give a talk about criminal justice and operations research when I was a graduate student, and he is part of the reason why I pursued research in public safety in emergency medical services. I gave my seminar in the Alfred Blumstein Classroom at CMU. It was an honor.

I will continue to remember Al Blumstein and his legacy.

The image of Al Blumstein at the top of this post was created using the NEOS server.

Read more about Al Blumstein:

• Al Blumstein’s New York Times obituary. You can read this obituary using the link I provide, even if you do not have a subscription.
• Official obituary 
• INFORMS History of O.R. Excellence: Biographical Profile 
• Carnegie Mellon obituary
• The video below was created in 2018 to celebrate the life, work, and legacy of Al Blumstein at his 50th anniversary at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College [32 minutes]

• AI Fundamentals & Applications for Engineers – Learn how to apply AI concepts to real-world engineering challenges
  • March 31 – April 1, 2026 https://interpro.wisc.edu/courses/artificial-intelligence-fundamentals-and-applications-for-engineers/
• AI Strategy & Governance – Understand how to lead AI initiatives responsibly, ethically, and at scale
  • May 12-13, 2026
    go.wisc.edu/ai-strategy

Both courses are two days, offered in a synchronous, hybrid format through UW-Madison’s Interdisciplinary Professional Programs (Interpro). That means you can join from anywhere—no travel to Madison required—while those who prefer an in‑person experience are welcome to join me on campus.

I’m thrilled to partner with InterPro on these offerings. Their team excels at helping instructors create engaging, practice‑focused learning experiences that bring cutting‑edge engineering topics to professionals around the world.

One powerful alternative, which I learned about while reading The Ethical Algorithm by Michael Kearns and Aaron Roth, is differential privacy. Instead of hiding or coarsening data, differential privacy deliberately introduces random noise into computations so that the contribution of any individual becomes statistically indistinguishable. Differential privacy adds mathematically calibrated randomness that protects individuals without sacrificing insight. This enables analysts to extract meaningful trends while ensuring that no single person’s information can be confidently inferred.

Randomization is the key idea behind differential privacy. An example of this approach is the randomized response technique, originally developed by Stanley Warner in the 1960s to collect data about sensitive topics.

Here’s a version of randomized response that I teach in my stochastic processes course. Suppose a researcher wants to estimate how many people hold certain political beliefs, but respondents may be reluctant to answer honestly. Each respondent privately flips two coins before answering. If both coins land heads, they report their true political leaning (conservative, liberal, or moderate). For any other combination of flips, they report “liberal” or “conservative,” regardless of their actual belief. This predetermined procedure forces a random liberal/conservative response, even when untrue, so the math becomes easy to correct by the researcher.

Because most responses are deliberately randomized, an outsider cannot infer an individual’s true answer and respondents may be more willing to answer honestly as a result. When the researcher aggregates responses from many people, the known probabilities of the coin flips allow them to mathematically remove the noise and estimate the overall proportions accurately, without knowing the ground truth for any single respondent.

This small but powerful idea illustrates how randomness can protect privacy without sacrificing the ability to learn from data. The fascinating part is that even though most responses are fake, the aggregate estimate is still accurate.

The same principles we teach in courses on probability and stochastic processes underpin differential privacy systems widely used by government and industry, including by the U.S. Census Bureau and Google.

For the students I teach (mostly engineering students), this topic offers a compelling example of how probability theory shapes practical algorithms that are mathematically elegant and also responsible.

Their responses guide me. Throughout the course, I weave in topics they care about, including budgeting, investing, understanding student loans, and even cryptocurrency. Several interactive course examples aim to teach students about the cost of credit card balances, how mortgages work (and when to refinance), when to purchase insurance, and the benefits of saving for retirement as early as possible.

I end the semester with a fun lecture summarizing my personal finance lessons.

I developed my first personal finance lecture in 2010, when I was at Virginia Commonwealth University. I enjoyed giving annual talks to the Honors College, and one year I decided to switch my talk from research to personal finance, so students would gain some practical knowledge that they could immediately use.

In developing that lecture, I realized that the most important personal finance habits are simple yet powerful. Others have noted that the best personal finance advice is straightforward and can fit on a notecard. I agree.

When I told my parents about the lecture, my mom offered one piece of advice: “Tell them to pay their credit card off in full every month.” I included it in my list. I credit much of my own financial success to my parents who made prudent financial decisions and set my up for financial success. I’m grateful for that advantage. Not everyone has access to that kind of guidance, so I use this lecture to share excellent advice from my parents and others more broadly.

I revived my personal finance notes when I started teaching Engineering Economic Analysis last year, and I turned the notes into a list of 10 simple rules. The list is printed below, and the lecture provides more context, information, and examples.

Including personal finance topics is rewarding for me. I enjoy seeing students connect classroom concepts such as the time-value of money to real-world decisions. At one point in the semester, we compared alternatives for paying for my daughter’s braces using the material in class and real financing options from my daughter’s orthodontist. It is my hope that students end the semester with the tools to invest wisely, manage risk, and plan for the future. If I can help students start their financial journey on solid ground, that’s a win that lasts far beyond graduation.

Professor Albert’s 10 rules for a flourishing financial future

1. Track your expenses
2. Set a budget and manage your big expenses
3. Pay your credit card statement in full every month
4. Start a Roth IRA as early as possible
5. Build and maintain an emergency fund
6. Invest in low-fee, well-diversified mutual funds (not individual stocks)
7. Borrow wisely by only taking out low-interest loans
8. Protect what matters against catastrophic losses (and skip extended warranties)
9. Don’t gamble
10. Remember the time value of money & other lessons from Engineering Economic Analysis!

What financial habit or piece of advice would you add to my list?

For more reading:

• 10 movies about engineering ethics
• why I’m excited to teach engineering ethics this fall