September 9, 2003

SMU Engineering Professor Receives Scholar/Teacher Award From United Methodist Church

Click on the photo below to view or download a high-resolution .jpg version.

DALLAS (SMU) -- Jeffery Kennington, a professor of Engineering Management, Information and Systems in the SMU School of Engineering, is the 2003 SMU recipient of The United Methodist Church's University Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award. Kennington is the first faculty member from the School of Engineering to receive this prestigious award.

The UMC's Division of Higher Education of the Board of Higher Education and Ministry gives the award in recognition of outstanding faculty members for their dedication and contributions to the learning arts and to their institution. Kennington was selected based on the recommendation of a university committee.

Kennington joined the SMU faculty in 1973 after receiving his Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He served as chair of the Department of Operations Research and Engineering Management from 1980-1989, and as chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering from 1989-1994.

He currently teaches classes in operations research and management science, and serves as director of the school's Operations Research program, which has been rated as one of the 25 best in the United States by The Gorman Report in the 1990s.

Kennington has supervised more than 20 Ph.D. and Doctor of Engineering students, and served as the principal investigator for more than $2 million in research grants, including 11 grants from the Office of Naval Research and six from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. His research specialty is design of algorithms to make processes more efficient in terms of money and human resources. His work has applications for logistics for the U.S. Air Force and personnel assignment for the U.S. Navy. Most recently, his research has focused on ways to improve the efficiency of telecommunication networks.

Kennington serves on the editorial boards of Computational Optimization and Applications and Telecommunications Systems and as associate editor of Networks and INFORMS Journal on Computing.