Oct. 30, 2012

Alumni, faculty, students salute Jack Muckstadt as he retires

Jason Koski/University Photography

About 200 alumni, faculty, students and friends of the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering (ORIE) celebrated John A. "Jack" Muckstadt's retirement Oct. 25 with a reception, poster session and symposium in Clark Hall and a dinner on Oct. 26.

Muckstadt, the Acheson-Laibe Professor of Engineering in ORIE and a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow, joined the faculty in 1974. Along with his research and teaching responsibilities, he was the school director for nine years; he also established and was the first director of the Cornell Manufacturing Engineering and Productivity Program.

A retired U.S. Air Force officer, Muckstadt was co-director of Cornell's Institute for Disease and Disaster Preparedness up until his retirement. In addition to his teaching and research, Muckstadt has consulted with dozens of corporations about their supply chain management and other operations.

"His shoes are too big to fill," said ORIE Professor Adrian Lewis during morning remarks. "I can see his fingerprints on everything we have accomplished here."

Muckstadt helped build ORIE's reputation by hiring the best and the brightest faculty talent for the school, Lewis said. He also helped put the school on sound financial footing. "He is very canny, very farsighted," Lewis said.

For more than three decades, Muckstadt has championed experiential learning, acting as adviser on countless student projects. "Jack has that rare talent of making ideas work," Lewis said.

Muckstadt has also been a mentor and role model for new faculty, said ORIE and computer science professor David Shmoys. "I was hired by Jack," Shmoys said. "He set the bar, the expectations of what a good faculty member should do."

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Alumni, faculty, students salute Jack Muckstadt as he retires