White Chair in Industrial Engineering Named

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The University of Arkansas College of Engineering announced Thursday, Jan. 18, that Ronald L. Rardin, a renowned professor and researcher in industrial engineering, has been named as the inaugural incumbent of the John and Mary Lib White Systems Integration Chair in Industrial Engineering.

Rardin, who will also hold the title of distinguished professor, was most recently professor of industrial engineering at Purdue University, where he served as director of the Purdue Energy Modeling Research Groups, an energy planning research initiative, and director of academic programs for the Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering, a research center dedicated to improving quality and accessibility of health care by drawing upon expertise in engineering, science, management and social sciences. For three years, beginning in 2000, Rardin was program director for operations research and service enterprise engineering at the National Science Foundation.

“Dr. Rardin’s research in health-care systems engineering presents a fantastic opportunity to be on the cutting edge of addressing some of today’s most critical challenges,” said Ashok Saxena, dean of the College of Engineering. “We could not be more pleased that a researcher and teacher of his caliber has joined us from one of the highest ranked industrial engineering programs in the country (second in undergraduate and fourth in graduate programs according to U.S. News and World Report) and will be a part of our ongoing efforts to offer the best engineering education available to the students of Arkansas.”

A native of Kansas, Rardin holds a bachelor of arts in mathematics and political science and a master’s degree in public administration of city management from the University of Kansas. He earned his doctoral degree in industrial and systems engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and remained as a faculty member there for eight years, before joining Purdue in 1982.

Rardin is an award-winning teacher and author, having won Purdue’s Pritsker Award for outstanding undergraduate teaching in industrial engineering four times, and authored a comprehensive undergraduate text titled Optimization in Operations Research, which won the Institute of Industrial Engineers’ Book-of-the-Year Award in 1998, as well as a graduate text Discrete Optimization.

The John and Mary Lib White Systems Integration Chair was endowed by the UA chancellor and his wife during the Campaign for the Twenty-First Century. The chair was created through a $1.5 million planned gift, which was matched by the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation.

Chancellor White, who was on the faculty with Rardin at Georgia Tech, said, “Mary Lib and I are honored to have our names affiliated with a scholar and teacher with the professional reputation, academic record, energy and enthusiasm that Ron Rardin brings to the University of Arkansas. We are very excited about having him join us at the University of Arkansas.”

Rardin’s research and teaching interests center on large-scale optimization modeling and algorithms, including their application in health-care delivery, transportation and logistics and energy planning. At the University of Arkansas, Rardin will focus his research interests on health-care systems engineering.

He is the author of numerous papers on optimization and served as editor for some of the top journals in the industrial engineering community. He is a fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers and a member of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences and the Mathematical Programming Society.

“It is a truly great honor and exciting opportunity to be joining the U of A and its industrial engineering program as White Chair at this pivotal moment in its development,” Rardin said. “Everywhere I look there is momentum for innovation and national leadership, and I look forward to contributing. The honor is all the sweeter because it has been made possible by the commitment of Chancellor White and his wife, whom I have known and respected for more than 30 years.”