 Welcome everyone. Welcome to the MITx MicroMasters and Supply Chain Management fourth completion celebration. Thank you for joining us and thank you to everyone in the room here for joining us. My name is Arthur Grau. I'm the community manager for the MITx MicroMasters. I had to come out from behind the keyboard. This is my first time as MC since 2016 so no more typing today. I get to actually talk to you live and in person. We hope you can join us for about 30 minutes as we tell the story about the challenges and joys of the MicroMasters program as we've experienced them this round. First we're going to hear about the genesis of the program from Professor Sheffey. We'll hear from Chris Cabellus about how the program was created. We'll hear from Dr. Eva Ponce to congratulate you on your recent success and we'll hear from our community of learners, some of whom are in the room and some of whom are joining online. So probably about 30 minutes going to be a little bit of fun. First I would like to introduce the man who probably needs no introduction, Professor Sheffey. He's the MIT Elijah Gray professor of engineering here at MIT and he's the director of our center. He's an expert in resilience, supply chain sustainability, and systems optimization. And he's the kind of person that you need on your side when you're developing a new program at MIT. So we really appreciate that if you could say a couple of words about the genesis of the program, you're welcome to stay there or come here and speak either way. Thanks Arthur. Thanks for the introduction and thanks for not making a long introduction. But we started this program because quite a start about 20 years ago when our industry partner started realizing that there are not enough people who are studying supply chain and worldwide there's a dearth of supply chain expertise. Our first response was to start with international centers in Spain, in Colombia, in Malaysia and now in Luxembourg and China. But even this is not enough. We were able to grow from 40 students a year in our master program to now about 200, 200 plus students a year. This is still a drop in the bucket compared to what was needed. So we went to the online program. This was the main reason to go to online when you can reach hundreds of thousands of people. Some of them are like today will graduate. Some of them just take it for the knowledge. And I was just lucky to be the head of the center while other people were doing all the heavy lifting. Mainly the most of the credit goes to Chris Kaplis who started doing online program before we even thought about the MicroMaster just in response to the need to educate the world in supply chain management. So I think I'll stop here and turn it to the people who actually did the heavy lifting and did the work. See you guys. Thank you so much. Really appreciate that. Next we'll hear from Chris and I did want to introduce him because in an early course I believe there's a rumor that Chris has said we should have the EOQ model tattooed on our foreheads if we wish to complete the course. So I have some EOQ models here for you temporary tattoos and we can we can wear them after the event. I can't show you mine. It's not on my forehead. Thank you Arthur. Congratulations to all of you. You've completed this. You passed the five courses and the grueling CFX which is not an easy task. Congratulations. You're the fourth class fourth cohort to successfully complete the MicroMasters. They're now 1592. Right. So almost 1600 credential holders from across the globe. They're using this knowledge to advance their careers, switch careers, come back to get a graduate degree. So there's a lot of use being put to for this degree. I didn't imagine just like Yossi said when we first did this, my first video was in the summer of 2014 and I did it mainly because I thought it would lessen my teaching load here at MIT. It hasn't at all. But what it did do was it opens up to a new way of learning. And so while a lot of the videos we did came from the courses we taught here at MIT, I think there's been more movement the other way. It's changed the way that we teach here at MIT as well. So there's been a lot of pollination across both ways. And so it's been a long effort and it's certainly not a individual effort. We had a strong team and we're very lucky. The team right now is led by Dr. Eva Ponce. She deserves the most credit. She's done the heaviest of lifting. My lifting was done during videos several years ago. Eva leads this program but we have a lot of primary course leads. Dr. Sergio Caballero, Alexis Bateman, Inma Varela, Dave Carell, Sina Galora, and countless TAs. Right now Andrea and Belial are our TAs and many, many, many community TAs, some of which are here in the audience now. We couldn't do it without the community TAs. Arthur has developed and cultivated our community. Connor Mikowski is responsible for a lot of the technical development to include the sandbox tools and all the algorithms we use to detect cheating, all those kind of things. And I'm not the only instructor. Professor Yossi Sheffi teaches, Dr. Jared Gensel, Dr. Bruce Arnson, Jim Rice, Dr. Chris Casa, as well as Eva, David and Alexis also teach. So it takes a large group here. But it's not just the people here at CTL. We also rely on people at the Office of Digital Learning. Lana Scott and her team helped us film the videos, edit them, and put them up. Shira Frugman is the technical coordinator and she's responsible for all the problems we've done. Jim Cain helps us do the lightboard videos that you guys love so much. Dana Doyle, Lisa Eichel, David Chodin, all lead the administrative aspects that you guys don't see. They're kind of behind the scenes. And then edX itself, started with Professor Anand Agarwal, who really launched the whole thing and provided tremendous support, as well as Mark Rudnick, Liz Bottomey and Maddie Stevens, who've really helped us in the program. And finally, none of this would have been possible without the vision and the guidance of Dr. Professor Sanjay Sarma, who founded the entire idea of the MicroMasters and also back to Yossi, who got this through the faculty, which is a non trivial task. So a lot of props there. So it truly takes a village to create this MicroMasters, but we couldn't do it without all of you doing all this work that makes it so worthwhile. So hopefully, I'll see you again, whether you come here to MIT or come to one of our scale centers or if I see you at a conference, please come up and say hi, and hope to meet you in the future in person. Thank you. That's why I call him the mastermind. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. Congratulations to all of you completed the CFX. This is the fourth. As you've heard, I'm grateful that Yossi and Chris have kept me around this long. I can't believe it's been almost four years that we've been working on this project. So it's fantastic. Next, I'd like to introduce Dr. Eva Ponce. She is another person who needs no introduction. She has really brought and invested her caring and expertise into this program and into all of the learners that that we have here. And she also likes to keep the learning consistent and challenging. Well, Chris has set the tone in rigor. Eva has promoted and maintained the highest standard of honor and authenticity, both for our team and for the learners everywhere, especially during exam proctoring. And I have a great image here that we put up whenever Eva and Chris are proctoring an exam. It's not advancing. Come on, let me try it like this. This is what there is the hat that they put on when they're proctoring your exam. So just so you know that they're there. But Dr. Ponce. Thank you, Arthur. And thank you, Yossi and Chris. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be part of this amazing team. Today, today's an important milestone for us. It's an important milestone for the SCX MicroMaster team. We are celebrating the fourth cohort of MicroMaster Credential holders. Congratulations to all of you. Learners, you are the ones that are making this a remarkable and a fascinating program. So I'm very proud of all of you. I'm really, really happy to be here today congratulating all of you. So imagine when you started most of you 18 months ago, one year ago, imagine this moment. Did you imagine that when you started, maybe by chance, your first SCX course has been here today celebrating this important milestone? I know, I know that you have put a lot of effort into this program. I know that you have families, you have jobs, you have many other commitments, and you have spent nights, days, weekends into this program. So congratulations for this hard work. Well done. As March of 2019, you are now our ambassadors. You are our representative across the world. So thank you for all of your hard work. Thank you for all your feedback, your engagement and contribution to our forums and to our program. We really much appreciate that. I want also to share with you the latest statistic of our program. So so far, we have almost 300,000 of learners enrolled in any of our SCX courses. 18,000 of these learners are verified learners. And almost 10,000 has earned a certificate in at least one of our SCX courses. Today, what we are celebrating are the MicroMaster holders. In total, we have 1,592 unique learners that earn a MicroMaster credential in supply chain management. So thank you. Thank you for all your hard work and congratulations again. And now we are going to hear from other centers. Yeah. Unless you want to talk more about the detail, I have a bunch of slides about the detail. Sure. Yes, I forgot about these details. Okay, so we have more statistics. Yes. So we have this is an analysis of our MicroMaster holders. So more than 400 people are from USA. We have more than 70, 90 people now from India. 66 from Brazil, 62 from the beautiful Spain, also from China, Germany, and many other countries, we have more than 70 countries represented among our MicroMaster holders. So in terms of education, most of our holders, they have a bachelor degree, a master degree, or even a PhD degree. So you are very well educated people. And in terms of gender, we need more women. We only have 15% of our women are MicroMaster holders. We need more women into this fascinating field. I really encourage you to join the supply chain management field. I'm so happy when we receive here at the center, senior VPs, senior directors, they are women, they are changing the world in supply chain management. So you're doing our program, there is a lot of opportunities for you too. And now we are going to hear from other centers. Yes. Thank you, Eva. First to Joaquin Arts, who's representing Luxembourg Center for transportation. Yeah. Congratulations. Congratulations. Sorry, that was Luxembourgish, that's not my name. Congratulations on completing the MicroMaster. This MicroMaster basically shows that you made a major step in both your personal and your professional development. Say personal development as well, because completing a master like this doesn't just show that you gained some knowledge that you didn't have before, it shows you have the perseverance and the character see something like this through in your own time. It also means that you are ready to propel both yourself personally and professionally to the next level. So I'm excited to see 1600 people getting propelled and then in turn propelling the field and the firms they work for to the next level of supply chain management. I want to congratulate you. If any of you want to do a residential program in Luxembourg, of course, I want to welcome you. If you have a MicroMaster, you will end up on the top of our admissions pile. Work well done professionally and personally and persevere. Thank you. Thank you so much Joaquin. Next we want to hear from Marta from Saragossa Logistics Center. Hello, everybody. Let me join my colleagues in congratulating you. So first of all, I just wanted to say a few words. So Seattle C is the pioneer center in the scale network. And we just recently celebrated our 15th anniversary. It was a truly unique event attended by 800 people, where our current students and alumni were really instrumental. So regarding the MicroMaster, you should be very proud of yourself. You have achieved the program. And of course, hard work always pays off. You have achieved the tools that you can apply in your careers are supply chain leaders now, and are part of an incredible cohort of alumni across the globe. The center we're currently having the second generation of the blended program with students who such as yourself took the MicroMaster credential, and then they decided to embark on another five adminter in Saragossa for four months and at MIT for the three weeks in January. So you're more than welcome to apply to our program, not only the blended program, but as Joaquin mentioned, the residential program as well. Looking forward to hearing from you and do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions. Once again, well done. Thank you very much, Marta. Next, we want to hear from our own David Carell here in the room with us. He was the person who was behind the keyboard for the most recent CFX that many of you have passed. And that's why you're here. Yeah, well, some people that are here are hopefully from previous previous runs as well. But David, thank you. I just wanted to take a second to acknowledge the difficulties that we know that you put up with in working with us on this path to completion, and to let you know how impressed we are by them. We frequently remarked one another here in the office that on top of the rest of your lives, your work, your families, your communities, just like Ava said, you find a lot of time for us too. So thank you. A few funny examples from CFX four. During CFX four, we had one learner whose wife gave birth to triplets during exam weekend, and he still successfully submitted his proctored exam and passed. We had another learner who wrote in from Brazil to assure me that the sounds in the background during her proctoring session were not illegal outside support, but rather the sounds of her country's famous Carnival which she was foregoing in order to take our test. She also passed. Great job. And finally, a truly international learner who wrote in to tell me that despite repeated requests to his new flatmates, he heard them engaging in conversation in the common area where he was also recording his proctored CFX session. In his note in his own defense, the learner wrote in to me to say, also, Dave, they spoke in Sinhalese, which is their mother tongue, and I don't have any knowledge of it, which makes it a random set of noises that are irrelevant and incomprehensible to me. Truly international. I think that also may have contributed to why they didn't understand the directions to stay out of the common area. Thank you, learners, for your hard work, for jumping through all of the hoops that we know that we put you through on this journey. Your commendation and your credential is truly well deserved. Thank you. Great. Thank you for that. Lovely story. And that's just a couple of the stories that we hear every time we have a CFX, which is really truly great fun. Next, we're going to zoom in to California where Alexis Bateman, our sustainability expert from OIT CTL and course lead, will say a few words. Great. Thanks, Arthur. Well, first of off, congratulations again. I feel honored every time I get to work with so many of you guys. You guys are great students. I get to work with a most amazing team that are some of the smartest and most hardworking people I've ever met. So we really enjoy getting to provide this program for you guys. And a few years back, Arthur kind of, you know, recognized that, you know, we're always kind of trying to get the best material and refine it and we're working literally around the clock to put out the best material for you guys when it opens at 1500 UTC. So and sometimes we're kind of sweating because we're working a little bit hard and we're kind of right to the very last minute. So he had the sweat towel printed to us a few years back so that, you know, it always kind of makes me, it makes me laugh when I'm trying to refine every piece that's going to be released for you guys, whether it be the exam or a graded assignment or a new video. And we're, you know, we're really trying to, you know, continually update and perfect materials so it can reach and engage and really help learnings for students of all types and all learnings. And I've never failed to impress with, to meet the students that, the learners that you guys are going through, you guys are some of the most passionate and hardworking crew I've ever met. And on that note, you know, as a team, we can't reach every learner all the time and the time that you guys need. So we have an amazing set of community teaching assistants, voluntary community teaching assistants that help us, you know, there can't be multiple Chris's or multiple Avis or multiple Alexis or Davis Dave's. So we have our CTAs who help us communicate and teach other learners to, you know, support their questions and answers and do things like beta testing late on a Sunday for me when I haven't been able to get the exam out on time. So we have an amazing set of CTAs that help us all the time. And whether you guys know it or not, they're really our right hand men that men and women that are really supporting us along on this journey. So we have to thank them because we really couldn't do this program without them. And personally, I, I work daily with them and they're really our right hand men. So and women, excuse me, men and women. So on that note, I want to introduce Chris Kutali, who is one of our esteemed CTAs and has been supporting us along the way with so many other CTAs and and have him say a few words. Thank you for that glowing introduction, Alexis. Can you hear me? Yes. Yeah. So CTAs, this morning I was just thinking, how do you describe a CTA? I think the best way to describe it is someone who has one foot on one side and the other foot on the other side, one on the student side and the other side on the other on the teaching staff side. But really that's just a dry way of looking at things. It's it's truly a very fulfilling experience, giving back to the community. I know that the program depends on CTAs a lot, but it is really a very, very enriching experience for the CTAs as well. The ability and the opportunity to connect with so many people and make a difference in their lives, how small or how big, because every day we see people make a post saying that I have this problem at work. How do you handle that? Or I learned this and that's not what I am seeing. There are many, many things that's going on and just the fact that we are able to reach so many people halfway across the globe from us. It's a fantastic experience. We learn from the students a lot, probably more than what the learners are learning from us. So this has been an awesome experience and I would strongly recommend becoming a CTA for every learner or at least participate in the forums because that's a great opportunity. That's all I have to say about my experience and I hope to continue as a CTA as long as you would take me. Over to you. Thank you very much, Chris. Really appreciate that. Thanks for being here and as you said, as Alex has said, we couldn't be doing this without you. Next we're going to hear from a recent credential earner in Lima, which is one of our, oh, I went past Lima. Sorry about that. We're going to hear from Alessandro in Lima. Alejandro, my bad. Hello, hello San Carto, but I'm not in Lima in Panama. You are in Panama. Yes, a very small country that is very important for all supply chainers. You all know about it. Okay, here we go. Yeah. So please tell us about your experience in the courses. Okay, that's it. Well, I started this program in September 2017 from the very beginning that is from the SC0. And since that one and a half year goes by having new challenges every week. At the beginning, I thought it would be like other online courses I already took, but a week after week is spending many hours watching the later, the recitation, trying the sandbox, doing the additional readings. I started to realize that this program was special. It is indeed challenging, rigorous, comprehensive concepts of tools are extremely useful. But I started to realize that every part of the program matched very well with other parts. And the concept behind that was learning experience. And I was having an exciting learning experience. So I wanted to have the maximum I could get from this program in order to have the best learning experience. And this program has many extra opportunities. For instance, I became a CTA, an experience that I truly recommend. It is very rewarding helping others to improve its learning experience. But I think the most rewarding moment within this program was when I had the opportunity to meet all the real people that make this possible at the bootcamp. It was the whole week at the MIT meeting personally Chris, Arthur, Sheffi, Jim, Sergio, David, and many others, learners like me. I would like to say thanks to every real people that makes this wonderful learning experience to all of us come true. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it. We have a few learners in the room. Just I wanted to invite them up as a group. They're here on campus as part of the blended program. And if one of you could just say a couple of words about what that's like. But I'd love to if they can see your faces would be great. Here's where all of our all of our folks are. Yes, I do need an extra microphone. Sunita. I hardly need a microphone, Arthur, but thank you for that anyway. And we want to congratulate all of you. This is a great, great achievement. We've been there. We know what you went through. And this is incredible. Congratulations. We just wanted to say that it's been wonderful being here. And you know, we kind of went on this journey and we know what you went through. And being here is just another step forward. And you have more opportunities like this coming your way. Since you're all now officially micro masters credential holders. So congratulations. If you are in the application process to MIT or other scale centers. Great. Thank you so much. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you for coming up. I really appreciate it. So as we get ready to close, we have some more words of encouragement from Dr. Ponce. Yes, we have some statistics to share because many of you asked, does the credential help me to improve my career? So we conducted a survey in 2018. And we found that 84% of our micro master holders said that yes, this helped them to grow within their own company. Also 34% reported to us that the credential helped them to apply for a new job in supply chain management. And we also asked about the increase in the income. So 30% of our of our holders said that the micro master credential make a future important difference in the increase of their salaries. So whether you are looking for new opportunities, whether you are planning to use this just to apply for a new your job to continue in your company or just to start new opportunities. I really, this is just the beginning. I don't think this is the end. This is the beginning of a new adventure in supply chain management. And there are many opportunities for you micro master holders. I really encourage you to apply to the MIT master degree, blended master degree here. Dr. Maria Jesus Sainz, she's the director of the MIT blended at MIT. You can also apply to other blended master degree in any of our MIT scale centers in Saragossa, in Malaysia. We have also more than 20 universities across the world, recognizing now the micro master credential as a pathway for credit. So these are also opportunities for you to apply. We also have companies, companies engaging on micro master program. Today we are congratulating eight GE associates that they are earning their micro master holders. So congratulations to this GE cohort. We also have a new cohort from GE, a new cohort from Walmart, a cohort from General Motors. Most of our learners are reporting that they belong to many different companies, to Amazon, to Google, to Apple. We are very happy to have you all part of this program and bring your experience to our program. We really appreciate that. We are also offering a bootcamp. Thank you, Alessandro, for mentioning that. Bootcamp is going to be immersion supply chain management. It's a week that is going to happen this July in 2019. We want to provide you an interactive, intense experience in supply chain management. You will have the opportunity to meet these cool staff of people. You will have also the opportunity to increase your network, to also meet with senior VIPs, senior directors in supply chain. So Dr. Imabureya is working hard now in putting all of these things together. For those of you who wants to have a summer immersion in supply chain management, July 2019 will be an opportunity. So as I mentioned, this is just the beginning of a new adventure in supply chain management. Again, I want to congratulate to you all. And before I finalize this event, I really want to say thank you. Thank you to President Rafe for his vision and his support to these programs since the very beginning. Thank you to Chris for having me as part of this program. I owe a big thank you to my awesome team. I have a great team of course, Leeds, Alexis, Sergio, Ima, Dave, Sina and Alex. You are awesome and you are doing a great job of running these courses. Thank you to the TAs. Thank you to our amazing community, teaching assistants, Arthur and the whole team. So thank you to all. Thank you also to Shira for all your help every single day. And, Edex, it's always a pleasure to work with you and without the tireless effort of all of you, we wouldn't be able to provide this credential today. So thank you to everyone. Let's finalize with a round of applause to this fourth cohort. Macro master credential holders. Thank you.