February 20, 2025
Prof. Dick Forrester will present "The First-Year Seminar Assignment Problem". Free pizza and everyone welcome to attend.
At Dickinson College, all incoming first-year students enroll in a First-Year Seminar designed to introduce them to the rigors of college-level work through writing assignments, research projects, and classroom discussions. To match students with seminars that align with their interests, they rank their top six choices from a list of options. The college then assigns students to seminars with the dual objectives of honoring individual preferences while maintaining diversity within each seminar. This talk will explore student-faculty research projects that have shaped the modeling techniques used in the assignment process. We will introduce key concepts in optimization modeling, multi-criteria optimization, and linearization approaches, highlighting how these methods balance competing priorities.