Barbara Hoopes honored with Warren Holtzman Outstanding Educator Award and University Certificate of Teaching Excellence

Barbara J. Hoopes, associate professor, Department of Business Information Technology, Pamplin College of Business, National Capital Region, has been awarded the Warren Holtzman Outstanding Educator Award.  The announcement was made by Richard Sorensen, dean of Pamplin College.

The Holtzman Awards are given to the same faculty members selected for college teaching excellence awards. Criteria include outstanding effectiveness in the classroom as indicated by strong teaching evaluations for the past three to five years, effective pedagogical approaches, supervision of independent studies, course development, curriculum development, involvement/supervision of student organizations, teaching or curriculum-related committee work, and teaching or curriculum-related research.

In addition to the Holtzman award and the college teaching excellence award, Hoopes also received the University Certificate of Teaching Excellence, awarded by the University Academy of Teaching Excellence.

Hoopes teaches the core Operations Management course in International Operations and Information Technology, and other electives in the areas of Management Science, Decision Support Systems, and Artificial Intelligence Applications in Business. Her current research interests are in the area of performance measurement and evaluation, specifically using Data Envelopment Analysis, a mathematical modeling approach for efficiency analysis and process improvement.

She has published papers in Management Science, Journal of Productivity Analysis, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Annals of OR, and International Journal of Operations and Quantitative Management. Hoopes teaches internationally for the Society of Logistics Engineers in the areas of Life-Cycle Cost Analysis and Management Science.  She is a member of INFORMS and SOLE.

Among her significant contributions to the MBA program cited in Hoope's nomination letter for the Holtzman Award is her continuing relationship with the Alexandria Small Business Development Center, which has produced many high-quality projects from student groups in operations management classes.  This very successful effort on her part was featured in VT News as well as being featured in Small Business Success magazine (2008) and The Alexandria Times (2007).

Hoopes received a Ph.D. in operations research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.S. in mathematics from Davidson College.

Posted April 21, 2011