Joel Sokol, Harold E. Smalley Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE), has been awarded Georgia Tech’s Outstanding Lifetime Learning Award. 

The annual honor recognizes one faculty member for their excellence in expanding access to learning and creating meaningful educational experiences for global audiences. 

Sokol was honored for his sustained and impactful contributions to education at scale, highlighting his development and leadership of the Online Master of Science in Analytics (OMSA) program. 

Since launching in 2017, OMSA has graduated more than 6,900 students and reaches learners from more than 140 countries.

The program serves a wide range of students, from early-career professionals to senior leaders and individuals pursuing new career paths, bringing analytics education to those who would not otherwise have access.     

OSMA combines flexibility with rigor, integrating interdisciplinary content with large-scale, project-based learning. Its capstone experience connects hundreds of students each semester with companies and organizations, enabling them to apply analytics to practical challenges in diverse settings. 

"It's particularly rewarding, because OMSA has been able to impact so many students of all ages and backgrounds around the world, as well as all of the employers they apply their learning for," said Professor Sokol, who has also won the EURO Management Science Strategic Innovation Prize and twice been named to Chief Data Officer Magazine's list of Academic Data Leaders.

OSMA courses have reached tens of thousands of learners and consistently receive strong student feedback, demonstrating that high-quality instruction can be sustained even at very large scale.  

Beyond OMSA, Sokol has extended Georgia Tech’s impact through additional initiatives in professional and online education, as well as new program development across degree and non-degree offerings. His work reflects a broader commitment to making analytics and optimization accessible to learners at all stages of their careers.