SEPTEMBER 1, 2021 — The University of Washington’s Online Master of Supply Chain Transportation & Logistics (SCTL) Program has received the Transportation Education Council’s 2021 Innovation in Education Award. This award seeks to advance innovation in transportation education by recognizing an individual, college/university department, or organization/learning institution that has implemented an innovative technique or program to attract, develop, and/or retrain transportation professionals. Anne Goodchild, Director, SCTL Center, leads the University of Washington’s academic and research efforts in the area of supply chain, logistics, and freight transportation. She is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and serves as Founding Director of both the Supply Chain Transportation & Logistics online Master’s degree program and the Supply Chain Transportation & Logistics Center.
Since 2013, the SCTL has delivered a leading-edge online learning experience for over 250 students currently working in the supply chain and logistics industries. The two-year, part-time program employs an innovative delivery model that combines the high-touch experience of an in-person graduate program with the convenience of an online program designed for working professionals. It begins with an on-campus Residency Week, where students meet other members of their cohort, the program’s Advisory Board, faculty, alumni, and current students. During the Residency Week students complete an introductory course, while also building the inter-personal relationships that will allow them succeed academically and professionally. The SCTL program fills a gap in supply chain education— providing focused training on transportation and logistics. It remains the only program with this emphasis. This program brings together students working in both the shipper and carrier side of transportation and educates students about their role in the larger transportation system.
The program was specifically designed to combine the flexibility of online learning with the real-time interactions available in a physical classroom. Students watch asynchronous lectures delivered by professors and complete readings, assignments, and group projects prior to the program’s two-hour weekly live online class sessions. The live sessions provide a truly interactive environment where students ask questions, share their experiences, and work on solving real-world problems in breakout groups before returning to present to the class. Student teams work one-on-one with a professor to scope the project, devise a realistic solution, identify the resources required to address it, create an implementation plan, and develop a financial analysis to demonstrate the initiative’s value. Students present to panels comprised of members of the program’s Advisory Board—senior executives from Amazon, Boeing, Nordstrom, Microsoft, Costco, and well as CEOs of innovative early-stage supply chain technology companies.