Dean of the Graduate School Elected to Leadership of International Engineering Institute

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Ed Pohl, Dean of Graduate School & International Education

Ed Pohl, dean of the Graduate School and International Education, has been elected as senior vice-president for academics of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) and will be joining the Board of Trustees in March.

The IISE is the the world's largest professional society dedicated solely to the support of the industrial engineering profession. It is an international, nonprofit association that provides leadership for the application, education, training, research and development of industrial and systems engineering.

In response to the notification of this news, Chase Rainwater, head of the Department of Industrial Engineering, commented, "Dr. Pohl is an elite leader within the industrial and systems engineering community. IISE is fortunate to have him serving as its newest vice president. His service continues a long tradition of University of Arkansas leadership in this organization."

"I am honored to be chosen to serve as senior vice president for the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers," Pohl said. "I look forward to working with the IISE leadership team and others across the organization to advance the industrial engineering field both nationally and abroad."

Pohl was named dean of the Graduate School and International Education in June 2023. He served as head of the Department of Industrial Engineering in the College of Engineering from 2014 to 2023. Prior to this, he was the director of the Master of Science in Operations Management online degree program for seven years.

Pohl joined the U of A in 2004. Before coming to Arkansas, he spent 21 years in the United States Air Force, where he served in a variety of engineering, operations analysis and academic positions. Previous assignments include the deputy director of the Operations Research Center at the United States Military Academy; operations analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he performed independent cost schedule, performance and risk assessments on major acquisition programs; and as a munition's logistics manager at the Air Force Operational Test Center.

He received his Ph.D. in systems and industrial engineering from the University of Arizona. He holds an M.S. in systems engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology, an M.S. in reliability engineering from the University of Arizona, an M.S. in engineering management from the University of Dayton and a B.S. in electrical engineering from Boston University.

He was elected as a fellow of IISE in 2014 and is also a fellow of the American Society for Engineering Management and the Society of Reliability Engineers. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Society for Quality, a Diplomate in the Society of Health Systems and a member of the International Council on Systems Engineering, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences and the Association for Health Care Resource & Materials Management.

He has received numerous awards and honors, both military and academic, including the J. Steinhardt Prize for lifetime achievement in military operations research.