A Davidson College multi-objective assignment problem: a case study

This paper presents a multi-objective linear integer program that assigns student volunteers to present lectures at participating classes in local schools. A student’s class assignment is based upon his or her availability to teach at that time as well as several additional factors including student preferences regarding commuting and partners as well as the institution’s goal of creating diverse student groups. This case study shows that the proposed mathematical program dramatically improves the assignments of students to classes and provides increased flexibility for modeling other goals and factors in future years. In addition, this multi-phase model can be applied in other contexts, such as crew scheduling or the scheduling of parallel sessions of large conferences.