Faculty & Research

The Julie Hays Teaching Award

Dr. Julie Hays

The Opus College of Business is proud to announce the third annual Julie Hays Teaching Award in honor of Dr. Julie Hays. Dr. Hays was a member of St. Thomas’ Decision Sciences Department (now Operations and Supply Chain Management) and was vice chair of the Opus College of Business faculty. She died suddenly on November 11, 2007.

A native of St. Paul, Hays earned a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota, an M.B.A. from St. Thomas in 1982 and a Ph.D. in operations and management science from the University of Minnesota. She taught courses in operations management and statistics at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Her research focused on service quality and service operations management, including research on service guarantees that was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Dr. Hays also was involved in research related to pedagogy, teaching and learning, and published articles in academic and practitioner journals. She received the 1998 Juran Fellowship award from the Juran Center for Leadership in Quality at the University of Minnesota. Along with Dan McLaughlin, director of the Center for Health & Medical Affairs at UST, she published Healthcare Operations Management (Health Administration Press, 2008).

The Julie Hays Teaching Award was proposed by the Opus College of Business teaching committee as a means of honoring Dr. Hays by recognizing faculty members who exemplify her commitment to teaching and learning.

“UST is a teaching university where faculty research is also valued.  Julie Hays exemplified the values we share as scholar-teachers,” says Dean Christopher Puto. “This award is designed to recognize the high caliber of teaching embodied in our commitment to students.”  Read more from her colleagues.