Professor Jeffery Kennington joins students after Commencement in May 2010.
“I enjoy reading books, solving problems, developing software, writing papers and learning new things. That’s why I’ve been in school for the past 50 years. However, not everybody aspires to be a scholar, and my strategy is to make my courses fun for the President’s Scholars as well as those with an aversion to education.
“Recently, I’ve been teaching management science to first-year undergraduate students and operations research to graduate students. These terms refer to a field that uses optimization theory and computer models to help solve certain types of managerial problems. The mathematics we apply is quite elegant, but not easily understood at the first presentation. I explain this complicated material in a simple and organized manner so that the students don’t shoulder the complete burden for mastering this information.
“In my undergraduate class with 18 students, the first 18 classes begin with a designated student giving a five-minute talk about his or her life. Generally they tell where they were born, where they grew up, their activities in high school, why they selected SMU, why they are in this course, and what they think a management scientist does. This has been a successful experiment, and I plan to continue this practice for small classes.”
Jeffery Kennington, University Distinguished Professor of Engineering Management, Information and Systems, joined SMU in 1973. Kennington received the United Methodist Church University Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award in 2003 and was named an Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor in 2004. He conducts research on telecommunication design, network flows and integer programming.