Minor Program in Operations Research (OR)
The Operations Research minor consists of a minimum of 18 credit hours of a logical sequence of courses. Only three of these hours may be taken in the student's degree-granting department. Three of these hours must consist of a deterministic modeling course, three must consist of a stochastic modeling course, and no more than three must draw from a survey course (combining both stochastic and deterministic modeling).
The objectives of the minor are to supplement an engineering or applied science background with a formal approach to mathematical modeling that includes assessing and/or improving the performance of a system. Such a system could be naturally occurring or manmade. Examples of such systems are manufacturing lines, mines, wind farms, mechanical systems, such as turbines and generators (or a collection of such objects), waste water treatment facilities, and chemical processes. The formal approach includes optimization, (e.g., linear programming, nonlinear programming, integer programming), decision analysis, stochastic modeling, and simulation.
