Submission Deadline: May 31, 2013
APICS Educational and Research Foundation seeks applications for the 2013 George and Marion Plossl Research Fellowship. Named in honor of the late George Plossl and Marion Plossl, leading volunteers and long-time supporters of the APICS Educational and Research Foundation, the George and Marion Plossl Research Fellowship supports doctoral dissertation research on any topic relevant to the operations management discipline and that has the potential to yield novel managerial and practical insights.
Fellowship amount
APICS Educational and Research Foundation expects to award one fellowship in the amount of $2,500.
Eligibility
To be eligible for consideration, a submission must meet the following criteria:
- An applicant must be a PhD candidate in operations management (or a closely-related discipline) from a fully-accredited academic institution.
- The doctoral dissertation proposal of the applicant must have been approved by the thesis committee.
- The doctoral dissertation research must not have been completed at the time of submission.
Submission requirements
The following are submission requirements that have to be strictly met. Submissions that do not comply with these requirements run the risk of being disqualified.
1. Letter of introduction
The submission must include a nominating letter on university letterhead from the dissertation advisor of the doctoral student whose doctoral dissertation proposal is being entered for competition consideration. This nominating letter:
- Introduces the doctoral candidate, the dissertation advisor supervising the dissertation, and the degree-granting institution.
- Argues for the worthiness of the proposed doctoral dissertation research.
- Provides contact information for both the doctoral candidate and the dissertation advisor.
2. Executive summary
Content
The submission must include an executive summary with the following suggested sections:
- Describes and justifies the importance of the pragmatic problem that the doctoral dissertation addresses.
- Delineates the research questions that stem from this pragmatic problem.
- Discusses critical insights from the literature that have a bearing on the research questions and/or pragmatic problem motivating the research questions.
- Identifies and justifies the hypotheses to be examined.
- Explains the methods to be used in data collection and data analyses to provide answers to the research questions.
- Discusses the managerial implications of potential findings.
Format
The Executive Summary must adhere to the following formatting guidelines:
- Does not exceed a maximum of 10 double-spaced, 8.5" by 11", pages with 1-inch margins (top, bottom, left, and right).
- Includes a footer showing the page number.
- Uses Arial font, size 11 only.
Submission procedure
The letter of introduction and the executive summary should be submitted as a single PDF email attachment to the attention of:
Rashonda Ross
rross@apics.org
Please name the submission using the following convention: LAST NAME_FIRST NAME-2013 Plossl Dissertation Fellowship.
Once received, an email confirmation will be sent to the applicant.
Submission deadline
All submissions must be received by 5:00 p.m. CST May 31, 2013, to be eligible for the competition.
Submission evaluation
A team of academics and practitioners will evaluate a submission according to:
- Fit of proposed dissertation research with priorities of the APICS Educational and Research Foundation.
- Importance and originality of the proposal dissertation research.
- Potential contributions from the proposed dissertation research to science and practice.
- Strength of hypotheses development.
- Appropriateness and feasibility of methods for data collection and data analyses.