Current Job and Position
Associate Professor and Chair,
John E Simon Department of Accounting, Business, Economics and MIS
William Gordon Buckner Endowed Chair in Business

Education and Experience
Dr. Phelps earned a Bachelor of Science degree on Management with overload courses on Economics from Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, Turkey. She received her MS and PhD degrees from METU in the area of Operations Research, and her MBA with a concentration in Management Information Systems from Governors State University (GSU) in University Park, IL. In addition to graduate assistant / adjunct professor positions at METU and GSU, Dr. Phelps has worked as a Management Science consultant, research consultant / statistician, interpreter, speech writer, and the lyricist/drama director of the first Turkish rock opera.

Scholarly/Professional Highlights
Dr. Phelps spent one year in Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA on a Turkish Council of Higher Education scholarship (1993-94) and six months at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN as an exchange scholar funded by a Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey fellowship (2000-2001). Also in 2001, she received an Association of European Operations Research Societies/International Federation of Operations Research Societies grant to represent young European scientists at the Latin American Association of OR Societies Summer School in Vinie del Mar, Chile. Her research interests include multicriteria decision making, metaheuristics, distance collaboration, and pattern detection in communications. She has been published in flagship journals such as Management Science, Journal of the Operational Research Society, and INFORMS Journal of Computing.

Teaching Interests
Dr. Phelps teaches business courses in both the analytical (e.g. Production and Operations Management) and the qualitative (e.g. Human Resources Management, Organizational Behavior) end of the spectrum. She also designs all, and teaches most, of the Management Information Systems courses.

Personal Information
She lives with husband Ken, two cats, and a dog in a 1840s Illinois house that’s more a family member than a building. They have a one grandson and one granddaughter. Dr. Phelps is a weekend commuter and the picture attests to the fact that lately half her life is spent packing to travel between the two states.