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Professors Join Engineering Management Program

Professors Andrew J. Yu and Janice N. Tolk have joined the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, programmatic area of Engineering Management (EM), at the University of Tennessee Space Institute (UTSI).

“Janice and Andrew are a tremendous addition to the Engineering Management team here at UTSI. They will be instrumental in UTSI attaining and exceeding our goals for the engineering management program,” commented Robert Moore, UTSI Executive Director.

Andrew Yu, former Assistant Professor, Department of Engineering Management, Information and Systems at Southern Methodist University, has joined UTSI as an Associate Professor. He holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering from Louisiana State University.

Yu’s experience includes both industry and academia. He has served as an assistant professor at Southern Methodist University and Louisiana State University and as a lecturer at Shanghai Jiao Tong University located in Shanghai, China. Yu’s industrial experience includes i2 Technologies, where he worked as a supply chain and logistics solution architect, providing educational and implementation consultation to many companies, i.e., IBM, Northrop Grumman, Honeywell, and Cardinal Health for their supply chain solutions.

His research interests includes operations research and systems engineering in the areas of; supply chain and logistics optimization, assignment and scheduling, supply chain and logistics systems engineering, requirement engineering and optimization, and systems of systems performance prediction.

Janice Tolk joins UTSI as an Assistant Professor. She received her MS in Interdisciplinary Engineering and her PhD in Systems Engineering and Management from Texas Tech University. Tolk’s background includes work assignments in both academia and industry.

Tolk was previously employed at Texas Tech University (TTU) as a Professor of Practice, and as the Director of the Center of Excellence for High Reliability Organizations (HRO) and Processes. Prior to TTU she worked at Babcock and Wilcox (B&W) Technical Services Pantex, LLC in Amarillo, Texas, where she served in a variety of management and leadership positions, thus gaining a wide range of experience from facility engineering to manufacturing high explosives and special nuclear materials . In her last assignment at B&W, Tolk’s duties included working with the National Nuclear Security Administration to gain approval of nuclear explosive operations, as well as, other general and administrative tasks.

Her research interests include leadership, business problem solving, HROs, engineering administration and management, and strategic planning.

James Simonton, UTSI EM program director, mentioned “… I look forward to working with both Janice and Andrew, and integrating their talents and expertise into the EM program.”