Trucks, Trains and Passion for Teaching

Thomas Corsi’s faculty office has that homey look of someone who has really settled in. Decorations include framed watercolors of trainyards that his father painted, a University of Maryland logo an aunt cross-stitched, and sports posters from his hometown Cleveland teams.

One poster shows the starting lineup of the 1949 Indians, “the year I was born,” Corsi says. Then there is the collection of miniature semi-tractor trailers and freight trains, fitting for a guy who has made his career studying the trucking industry, logistics and supply chains.

Corsi, the Michelle L. Smith Professor of Logistics at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, joined the school in 1976. Since then he has changed offices a few times — his first was across campus in Morrill Hall before Van Munching Hall was built — but he has always been a part of the Logistics, Business and Public Policy Department.

In fact, he had a hand in hiring most of the supply chain management faculty in today’s close-knit department, who are as much friends as colleagues.

“You won’t find a more dedicated professor,” says Sandor Boyson, a supply chain management research professor, who has worked with Corsi for more than 20 years. “The attention and care he has for students is unmatched, and not just how they do in courses, but where they end up. He goes out of his way to find them projects, funds, jobs. It’s just who he is. That’s the measure of the man he is.”

Boyson says Corsi has consistently stepped up to take on difficult assignments, most recently taking over the Master of Science in Supply Chain Management program and revamping it. 

It was Corsi’s father, a public relations director for the nation’s oldest railroad workers union, who first got him interested in transportation. As an undergraduate studying geography at Case Western Reserve University, Corsi did some work for his father at union-sponsored conferences on transportation policy, where he met prominent academics in the field.

One suggested Corsi study under him at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, so with his sights set on a career in academia, Corsi entered the PhD program after earning his bachelor’s degree. From there, he landed at the University of Maryland, eager to move to the Washington, D.C. region where federal agencies were steering transportation policy.

“I got involved in research for the Interstate Commerce Commission on owner-operator truck drivers,” Corsi says. “That got me into the trucking industry, which really has been one of the areas that I’ve spent a lot of time doing research.”

When he started in academia, “supply chain management wasn’t a ‘thing’ at all,” Corsi says. But with the gradual deregulation of transportation that began in the 1980s, the advent of the internet and new software, and the rise of globalization, supply chain management has become a critical business function.

“What has evolved is the recognition that you have to manage and excel in your supply chain,” Corsi says. His research also has evolved. “To keep relevant to the field I’ve had to expand the things that I do,” he says.  

Corsi continues to research the trucking industry, moving into issues of motor carrier safety and operating practices to reduce crash rates. He also has studied the responsibility of shippers and brokers in selecting motor carriers, government policies to manage safety, and how technology affects motor carrier safety.

He sees a lot of opportunity for future research in the trucking industry, which is grappling with driver shortages, in supply chain management with continued shifts in retail to online shopping, and how technology will change both with drones and driverless trucks.  

Corsi has worked extensively with Boyson on studying the broader area of supply chain management. The pair launched Smith’s Supply Chain Management Center in 1996. “It was one of the first supply chain centers in the country,” Corsi says, and they continue to do industry-leading research on building cyber supply chains and how e-supply chain technology can be integrated in companies to be more efficient and make better decisions in real-time.

They developed several supply chain software simulations with partners at Delft University in the Netherlands, the new versions of which Corsi still uses in the classroom today.

Even after more than four decades, Corsi hasn’t gotten bored yet. You can still find him in Van Munching Hall nearly every day, teaching courses at all levels and working with colleagues and students on research. He has advised 15 PhD students who have gone on to faculty positions at some of the top supply chain programs in the country.

“I don’t golf,” he jokes. “Work is my hobby.”

When not working, Corsi enjoys spending time with his family. He has four grown children and five grandchildren. He and his wife recently downsized from the Maryland suburbs to a condo in Washington, D.C.’s Logan Circle neighborhood.

“I like living in a very dynamic part of the city,” Corsi says. He has been enjoying leaving his car parked on the weekends and walking to restaurants and shops, and using Metro to get around the city or to College Park during the week, where he still looks forward to coming to campus.

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