(upbeat clapping and drum)
-: So Jennifer we're living in times
unlike any we've seen in 100 years.
And in supply chain management, your field,
and what you work in and lead here at the university,
what's it like to be in this time, in that field?
-: It's definitely the case that we've never seen
disruptions of this magnitude or this global scale before.
And so that creates a unique experience,
both for teaching and research.
When supply chains work well,
they're invisible to the average person
and we had well-designed, well-managed supply chains
capable of efficiently producing and delivering
a huge variety of products.
And that was unappreciated.
That was unseen, but not anymore.
This really is an opportunity for us
to highlight the importance of what we do.
-: How do you bring that moment into the classroom?
-: Oh, I think the theories,
the methods that we teach haven't changed,
but how we teach them have changed quite a bit.
We've always taught the mathematics of queuing theory
to talk about why congestion occurs in a supply chain.
And we would traditionally talk about
lines of customers at a grocery store
or piles of work in process inventory
at a manufacturing facility to explain that.
But now of course,
we talk about the boats off the coast of California
waiting to dock and unload, and we can use the same theory
to say, "Why is that happening?
What's the cause?"
But then also to help our students think critically
about the solutions to that.
-: So our students are going through this time as well.
How do you think that living through this moment,
they will, what they'll take away from it
in supply chain management?
-: Yeah, I mean, for our students,
we've always told them that supply chains impact every
industry, every business, every consumer.
And to be honest,
I don't know that they fully got that before,
but they do now.
And they're inspired. They're motivated to learn more.
They're asking more questions in class
and they're challenging what we say more.
They really are invested in this
based on everything we've been through
in the past two years.
-: Well, it's true that this is a really unique time.
And the supply chain management program
in our College of Business
is up to the challenge of meeting that time
and preparing our students for the future.
-: Thank you.