McGraw-Hill/Irwin and the Decision Sciences Institute are co-sponsoring the Elwood S. Buffa Doctoral Dissertation Competition. The purpose of the competition is to identify and recognize outstanding doctoral research in the development of theory or applications of the decision sciences completed during 2007. A monetary award of $1,500 will be presented at the 2008 Annual Meeting. Submission deadline is April 1, 2008.

The dissertation must deal with the development of methodology for, or application of, the decision sciences.

The dissertation must have been accepted by the degree-granting institution within the 2007 calendar year. It is not necessary for the degree to have been awarded by the end of 2007. Also, the dissertation may not have been submitted previously to a Decision Sciences Institute dissertation competition.

Send the following as PDF files to: dissertations@thekendalls.org

1. A nominating letter on university letterhead stationery submitted by the student’s major professor. This letter introduces the student, the supervisor of the dissertation, and the degree-granting institution. It also certifies the acceptance of the dissertation by the institution within the required time frame. All contact information for both the author and the major professor should also be stated in the letter. This letter should be emailed as a PDF file to the e-mail address given above either together with the other material (preferred) or separately. Call this file “ZZZ-Nomination” where ZZZ is the first 3 letters of the student’s last name. (For example, if the student’s name was Kong, the file should be called “Kon-Nomination”)

2. A separate statement by the major professor about why the dissertation deserves special recognition. This letter should be emailed as a PDF file to the e-mail address given above either together with the other material (preferred) or separately. Call this file “ZZZ-Recommendation” where ZZZ is the first 3 letters of the student’s last name.

3. A summary of the dissertation. This five-to-ten page double-spaced overview should include a description of the problem, the methodology, and the major findings and conclusions. At the top of the first page, the dissertation’s major and minor fields should be identified. Major fields typically are accounting, economics, finance, information systems, organizational behavior, design, and theory, operations management, supply chain management, and strategy/policy. Minor fields are often simulation, optimization, service sector, quality, quantitative analysis, artificial intelligence, expert systems, experimental design, and so on. The summary should include a 250-word abstract. This letter should be emailed as a PDF file to the e-mail address given above either together with the other material (preferred) or separately. Call this file “ZZZ-Summary” where ZZZ is the first 3 letters of the student’s last name.

4. A complete dissertation in PDF format. This must be a single file. Separate files for individual chapters or appendices are NOT acceptable and will not be reviewed. Please email this file in a ZIP format to conserve space to the email address above. Call this file “ZZZ-Dissertation” where ZZZ is the first 3 letters of the student’s last name.

Important: Because of the blind-review process, it is essential that the author, degree-granting institution, and supervising professor not be identified within the contents of items 2, 3, and 4 above. All acknowledgments or other references that would identify the author, institution, or professors must be removed from the dissertation and all accompanying documents except the nominating letter. The coordinator will change the names of files before they are distributed to the reviewers so that the names of files are not identifiable with a particular student.

Supervising professor and student materials may be submitted together or separately. In ALL email communications, make sure that the doctoral student’s full name appears somewhere in the email message. n

Elwood S. Buffa Doctoral Dissertation Competition Coordinator
Julie E. Kendall
Rutgers University
School of Business-Camden
dissertations@thekendalls.org