I am sending this letter on behalf of Rhonda Lummus, President of the APICS E&R Foundation

       Bob Collins, Executive Director, APICS E&R Foundation

Dear District Managers:
 

Please share the following communication with your chapters and district staff.
 

The Education and Research (E&R) Foundation  Board of Directors made the decision at their early February board meeting to replace the Donald W. Fogarty (DWF) International Paper Competition. There will be no DWF paper competition this year at the foundation level.
 

As the E&R Board discussed the DWF program we considered the following facts:
 

1. There have been some very good papers over the years but there has been a marked decrease in both the quality and quantity of the papers. For instance, in 2007 there were no submissions from four regions. (Some chapters within regions may have run the competitions locally, but did not  forward them to the Foundation.)  
 
2. There is no process for using the content of the papers elsewhere in APICS. We seldom receive  requests for copies of the papers and they are not incorporated into APICS materials. In many cases, from having been a judge multiple times myself, I would hesitate to use the content for any other purpose.  With so much information available electronically today, it is difficult to differentiate the students original thoughts from what has been taken from other sources (which they don’t cite very well).
 
3. We have seen a tremendous increase in the number papers submitted by multiple students.  Here is an example fromone reg ion (similar examples could be given from other regions), the names removed. All the papers came from the same school and there were 4 to 5 student names on each paper:
 
                Undergraduate 1^st place: Janicki Industries and Capacity  Planning - 4 authors
 
                Undergraduate 2^nd  place: Best Practices in Acquisitions: A  Case Study of Acme Corporation ˆ 5 authors
 
                Undergraduate 3^rd place:  Infrared Data Acquisition Installation at coinstar, Inc.  ˆ 5 authors 

This does not help us reach more students at more schools. When we attempt to divide the winnings into a check for each individual, it ends up being a small amount and a significant portion of the checks never get cashed.
 
4. Having followed this program for many years, and was awinner myself when I was a graduate student, I can say that the quality has definitely deteriorated over the years.  We spoke to a number of the judges on the competition and they are definitely in agreement.
 
5. Many of the schools we contacted  tell us that their students now work on cases or company projects, but not research papers.
 

Based on all this information, we decided to rethink the program and see what we could come up with that might have more value.  We believe that the students that we reach through the scholars program become very committed to APICS and we need to find more ways to reach out to students. We also believe that we need to increase the involvement of academicians if we want to reach students.  It is not about the cost of the program, but whether it was accomplishing our goal of  engaging more students and academicians in APICS.  
 
We decided to replace the paper competition with a student leadership forum. The new forum will bring together a number of student/professor pairs to meet with corporate representatives to discuss education and knowledge requirements for the workplace. The forum will be a facilitated, two-way discussion with a deliverable summarizing the requirements to be shared with corporations, students and colleges and universities. The student leadership forum seemed a good way to foster a dialogue between students, academicians, and corporate representatives. We anticipate a call to students and professors for participant applications in September and a meeting in November in Chicago.  Student/professor pairs will be selected using an application process.
 
The E&R Foundation led a Supply Chain Management 2010 study in 2006/2007 that resulted in a half dozen issues that corporations are most concerned about for the future. One of those gaps revolved around bringing qualified people into the workplace and the education these people required.  We believe the student leadership forum will help fill this need.
 
The E&R Foundation is still working out the details of the new program and will make announcements as they are firmed up.

If your chapters and/or districts would like to continue holding student paper competitions at the local level, please do so. If you have an active student chapter, we encourage it. However, the difference for you will be that you will not pass on district winners (if your district participates) to the foundation.

We are  certainly be open to comments and suggestions.
 

Rhonda Lummus
 
Chair APICS E&R Board