The HSOR Project: Insinuating OR into High School Mathematics Classrooms

The field of operations research faces a visibility problem that represents a serious problem in attracting the next generation of operations researchers and in building a base of consumers of operations research studies. A major goal of the initiative described here, the High School Operations Research Outreach (HSOR), is to bring operations research into high school mathematics classrooms. This serves the dual purpose of increasing public awareness of the field of operations research and introducing rich, real-world problem situations to students of high school mathematics. HSOR has attempted to do so by developing a series of classroom materials set in OR contexts and by establishing a cadre of OR professionals who are willing and available to present these materials to groups of high school mathematics teachers.