Siena College: Course Scheduling for the Business

Analytics Department

Shahryar Gheibi, Siena College HBP# NA0668

Joseph McCollum, Siena College
John O' Neill, Siena College

It had been a tough semester for Dr. Arthur Pierre, the chairperson of the Business
Analytics and Actuarial Science (BAAS) Department. It was April 1 st, 2019 and while
the class scheduling was complete for Fall 2019, Pierre was concerned about how
he would manage the Spring 2020 schedule timeline. Based on the new timeline
announced by the Assistant Dean, he would have only three weeks, rather than the
historical five weeks, from the start of the Fall 2019 semester in September to decide a
course schedule for the next semester, i.e., Spring 2020. The course schedule
would have to determine which courses would be taught by each faculty member in
particular class periods. He wondered whether he would be able to schedule classes
and professors under the same intense time pressure he recently experienced as he
developed the Fall 2019 schedule. The shortened timeline had caused an overwhelming
amount of stress and he was not sure he could bear another scheduling nightmare.
Course scheduling was one of Pierre’s most challenging and sensitive
responsibilities each semester. Students worked hard to make progress towards
their degree. Freshmen did not want to fall behind by missing core classes and
seniors required elective courses to graduate. “I have to take this course to
graduate” Pierre had often heard from students. Student athletes faced restrictions due
to their training schedule and contest calendar, while graduate students wanted
classes that fit their work schedule. Furthermore, he had to consider several
administrative aspects like class capacities, classroom availability and minimum
enrollment per section in addition to faculty preferences. He had to balance many
important factors in the process of course scheduling. In the first couple of weeks
of every semester, Pierre would be heavily burdened by reviewing course syllabi,
increasing classroom cap sizes to accommodate late enrollment, planning
department meetings and establishing expectations for his own students. Besides
fulfilling all these responsibilities, from that semester on, he had to squeeze a five-
week scheduling project into a three-week time frame that overlapped this critical
period.
Pierre was optimistic that there was hope for a better way. His colleague, Dr.
Shawn Gerard, had proposed a two-stage decision model as a more efficient and
effective way to set up the schedule. Pierre had to decide upon the constraints and
support Gerard to develop the optimization tool. Gerard would need adequate
preparation time to work out the kinks long before September hit.
Copyright  2021 by the Case Research Journal and by Shahryar Gheibi, Joseph McCollum and John
O'Neill. We appreciate the patient guidance and the constructive comments that Dr. Gina Grandy,
editor and the anonymous reviewers provided. We have disguised professors’ names and the
courses mentioned in the case.
Siena College: Course Scheduling for the Business Analytics 1
Department
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 SIENA COLLEGE AND BUSINESS ANALYTICS DEPARTMENT
Located in upstate New York, Siena College (hereafter, College) had approximately
3200 students. Forty percent of this student population pursued a major in the School
of Business, which was relatively large for a college of this size. Each academic year
consisted of two main semesters: Fall semester (September-December) and Spring
semester (January-May). Some courses were offered over the summer months (May-
August), but enrollment in summer courses was generally smaller than that in the main
semesters.
The School of Business was accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate
Schools of Business (AACSB), the course scheduling implication of which was that
the instructors only taught courses that they were qualified to teach based on
AACSB standards. The Business Analytics and Actuarial Science Department was a
part of the School of Business (Exhibit 1) and consisted of eight full-time faculty
members.
The BAAS department offered several core business courses that were
required for all students in the School of Business. The department had also
delivered upper- level courses for an undergraduate Business Analytics concentration
over the past two years. They would also be responsible for delivering their first
graduate Business Analytics course in support of a new MBA program which had a
soft launch in Spring 2019.
The undergraduate core courses typically required between six and seven sections
with 25-30 students per semester. Because the analytics concentration had smaller
enrollments, offering two or three upper-level sections per semester ensured that
the students would be able to graduate in a timely manner. The MBA enrollment
was difficult to predict since it would depend on the interests of a broadly defined
graduate population. The School of Business had planned for a small first cohort which
would grow incrementally, so offering one class section seemed reasonable.

COURSE SCHEDULING FOR THE BAAS DEPARTMENT

The BAAS course schedule was part of the larger College course schedule. Halfway
through each semester, the College schedule for the next semester was announced
to students and advisors. The schedule contained the necessary information that
students needed to select major/elective courses and manage their course load for
the ensuing semester. Historically, this necessitated building the schedule early in the
semester, although not as early as Pierre had encountered earlier in 2019.
The Assistant Dean started the scheduling process each semester by providing an
allocation of the number of course sections per class period for each department. The
vast majority of business class sections at the College were either scheduled for three
days a week for sixty minutes per class on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (MWF) or
scheduled for two days a week for 85 minutes per class on Tuesday and Thursday
(TuTh). Most of the students and faculty preferred that their class day began later than
9:00 am and ended before 4:00 pm. This cultural norm had been in effect at the
College for over a decade. It had necessitated the departmental allocation
determined by the Assistant Dean to provide a balanced course offering across six
different departments in the School of Business. Two or three course sections per
time block were usually allocated to each department.
Along with the requirements stated by the Assistant Dean, student demands
certainly needed to be taken into account in the process of developing a course
schedule. Students wanted sections to be scheduled in their preferred time slots so that
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 they could have a seat in a class that would move them on in their academic program.
Based on his experience, if there were not enough sections per course, Pierre knew he
would receive numerous emails from students and academic advisors. These students’
emails would read “Is there any chance you may be opening another section of
BAAS6?” or “I know it’s already full and has a waiting list, but I need the class
for graduation.” Emails written by academic advisors would identify similar conflicts.
In a prior semester, the athletic advisor had written “Unfortunately, Section 2 does
conflict with the (lacrosse) practice schedule.” Comments like these would
sometimes have straightforward solutions like increasing section capacities if the
classroom allowed it. Other times, Pierre would have to create an entirely new
section for which he would then have to find an appropriate class period and a faculty
member to teach the course. Pierre was particularly worried about receiving these types
of emails as sometimes that would necessitate reworking the entire schedule.
Finally, faculty members had their own preferences for courses and class periods.
Ignoring their preferences would go against the collegiality among the faculty that had
helped the department grow and serve students distinctively over the years. Balancing
their preferences with student demand often required days of discussion,
negotiation and adjusting the schedule.
Pierre, with expertise in statistics, had been the chairperson of the BAAS
department for about five years. The scheduling approach that he had adopted was to
first identify the next semester’s student demand which would be stabilized around the
first week of classes in the current semester. Then, having received the Assistant
Dean’s departmental allocation, he would send out an informational sheet to the
full-time faculty inquiring about their preferences in terms of courses and class
periods. Once he had received the faculty preferences, Pierre used a step-by-step
process to build a course schedule for the next semester. This time-consuming
process often involved several iterations until a final draft was built. He prioritized
some courses over the others and scheduled them in the order of their priorities.
The end result would be an aggregate course schedule that would determine which
professor would teach an appropriate course in a particular time period. Any
remaining course sections not covered by the full-time faculty would have to be
assigned to the contingent faculty (e.g. adjuncts) who were typically hired on a
semester-by-semester basis as needed.
It took a lot of time and no small amount of stress to determine a course
schedule in a timely manner while striving to accommodate faculty preferences as
much as possible and satisfy student demand.

THE SCHEDULING CHALLENGE

Pierre reflected on how the scheduling ordeal arose. Four days prior to the start of the
Spring 2019 semester, on January 18 th, the already demanding scheduling process
became intensified significantly when an email from the Assistant Dean caught Pierre
by surprise. This email directed that he develop the Fall 2019 schedule in only three
weeks, rather than the typical five-week timeline to which he had been
accustomed. Pierre had to accomplish numerous tasks to support the department in
serving students and this drastic shortening of the timeline (Exhibit 2) brought about
an immense scheduling challenge.
Typically, he emailed the BAAS faculty about class scheduling for the next
semester at least two weeks after the new semester started after they had settled into
their classes. However, Pierre decided to email them on January 22 nd, the very first day
of the Spring 2019 semester. He inquired about their preferences for the upcoming
Siena College: Course Scheduling for the Business Analytics 3
Department
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 Fall semester

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 and determined January 28th as the due date for the faculty responses. He noted in his
email: “If you miss the deadline then it will be up to my discretion what you teach and
when you teach in the Fall 2019 semester.” It was evident from his tone that he
was under pressure and had no time to waste.
Pierre recalled that the scheduling task had become even more stressful. Four days
prior to the February 8th deadline for submitting the department’s schedule to the
School of Business, Pierre was made aware of a change in the circumstances of a
senior professor, which would create a scheduling conflict. Pierre vividly recalled
tempering the frustration that he had felt as he had made the series of changes
necessary to accommodate this issue. This type of problem arose occasionally,
particularly when professors picked up new responsibilities on College
committees, but the shortened timeline had made him particularly ornery because
there had been far less time for him to find a workable solution. However, an
impromptu conversation with a colleague during the height of that miserable
process had given Pierre reasons to believe that a useful, far more efficient method
was under development to assist him with the course scheduling decision and
alleviate this anticipated semesterly stress.

OPTIMIZING THE COURSE SCHEDULLE

Dr. Shawn Gerard, a junior faculty member in the BAAS department with expertise in
operations research and decision modelling, happened to stop into Pierre’s office
on January 27th. Gerard had joined the College about two and a half years prior
and enjoyed the collegiate environment in the BAAS department ever since. In his
few semesters of experience, he had never seen Pierre as frustrated as he had
during that semester. Although he was there for another reason, the conversation
quickly turned to the nature of the difficulty that Pierre was encountering. Gerard,
already surprised by the tone of Pierre’s email, became curious to know whether
he could help.
He took a closer look at what Pierre was working on and suggested “We need
to optimize this.”
“That would be great, but I’m not sure how to do it,” replied Pierre. Gerard pressed
on, “Give me a sample schedule, and I will work on it.”
Gerard had started teaching an MBA-level business analytics course in that same
semester and thought that this problem could make a great case study for his students.
Eager to begin working on the project, Gerard sent Pierre a follow-up email on the
next day:
“I'm dropping a note to ask for a copy of your Excel schedule for the next
semester. I thought a complete file could help as well. Let's talk about this
whenever you get a chance."
From the semi-finished version of the Fall 2019 schedule Pierre was able to
send him, Gerard realized that it would take weeks to work out the key details and
come up with a useful model given the complexity of the decision and his tight
schedule in that particular semester. Therefore, despite being anxious to start
working on the project, Gerard decided to wait a few days for Pierre to finalize the
Fall 2019 schedule. This would allow him to see whether he could replicate Pierre’s
submission with an initial attempt at building an optimization model.
A few weeks after the submission of the Fall 2019 schedule, Gerard found the
chance to work on the scheduling project. After an initial attempt, Gerard realized that
there was a size issue: given the number of courses, faculty, and the class periods, the
scheduling decision model was too large for Microsoft Excel Solver to handle.
Siena College: Course Scheduling for the Business Analytics 5
Department
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 However, he had some ideas about how to overcome it. On March 27th, he
requested a meeting to discuss his progress and ask for Pierre’s feedback.
Despite busy Mondays, Pierre gladly set up an afternoon meeting for Monday,
April 1st with his colleague to discuss the matter. After the intensely stressful process
of creating the schedule on the new timeline, Pierre knew that he could
significantly benefit from the efficiency that an optimization tool would provide. He
was excited to learn about Gerard’s progress.
After a short description of his initial attempt during the meeting, Gerard said,
“I suggest that we model it in two stages: first we assign courses to the faculty,
then we assign each course-faculty pair to a class time.” Pierre liked the idea.
Gerard added, “An additional advantage is that we can split the scheduling stage
into two separate problems: MWF and TuTh.”
First and foremost, Pierre and Gerard knew that the semester schedule had to
advance the progress of the student population toward their degree and therefore, there
had to be a constraint in their model that ensured the right number of sections were
offered and staffed. Then, they quickly agreed that the objective of the
optimization model in each of the two stages, i.e. the “course assignment” stage
and the “scheduling” stage, would be maximizing the total faculty preferences. To
this end, they decided to build preference matrices based on the preferences that
BAAS faculty members had expressed over the past five years (Exhibits 3, 4 and
5).
As their discussion progressed, Pierre mentioned that following the past practices
he would like all courses, and particularly BAAS6, to be taught by full-time faculty, if
possible. Pierre and Gerard needed to decide how to incorporate this departmental
priority into their optimization model. They also agreed that the preferences of senior
faculty would be prioritized over those of junior faculty. Therefore, they weighted each
instructor’s preference by a seniority coefficient, determined based on the instructor’s rank
and years of service, in both stages of the model (Exhibit 6).
Gerard had already thought of some constraints that needed to be incorporated
into the model based on his short experience at Siena College. For example, it would
be reasonable to try to avoid having instructors teach more than two consecutive class
periods in a day (Exhibits 4, 5). In fact, he did not have a pleasant experience with
back-to-back classes scheduled in the afternoon. However, he knew that whatever list
he created would most likely be incomplete. Pierre and Gerard came up with the
following list of constraints which required consideration in developing the final
model. Some of these would be required to meet faculty contractual and student
graduation requirements, while others were desirable.
 Each faculty is assigned to only the courses that he/she is qualified to teach
(Exhibit 7). For example, Dr. Berry is qualified to teach all courses except BAAS6
and BAAS8.
 Each full-time faculty member’s actual course load must be equal to his/her
required course load per semester according to their contracts (Exhibit 6).
 Ideally, the number of preparations (different courses that each faculty taught per
semester) for each full-time faculty would be no more than two.
 Ideally, no more than two sections of the course BAAS3 should be assigned to any
full-time faculty because of the extra workload emanating from the lab.
 The number of sections assigned to the faculty needs to be equal to the number of
sections required for each course (Exhibit 8). For example, the BAAS department

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 must offer exactly five sections of BAAS3 in the Spring 2020 semester over
all faculty due to the student demand.
 At most three course sections can be assigned to the same class period based
on allotments determined by the Assistant Dean. In other words, no more than
three classes of one or multiple BAAS courses can be scheduled in the same class
period.
 Ideally, no faculty should teach more than two consecutive classes.

It was almost the end of a hectic day on April 1 st, but the two colleagues were
invigorated by the progress they had made. Pierre needed to prioritize the constraints
and work with Gerard to develop a model that generated an effective schedule. Pierre,
then, would only need a few minutes to accomplish a daunting task. It would free
up days for the department chair to work on some productive initiatives, such as
expanding the Business Analytics concentration. There were only a few months before
the start of the next semester in September when he would have to go through another
three-week cycle of course scheduling.

Siena College: Course Scheduling for the Business Analytics 7

Department
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 Exhibit 1 - Academic Structure of the School of Business at Siena College

Source: Developed by the authors based on public online information

Exhibit 2 – Timeline of the Scheduling Process

Source: Built by the authors based on their past experience

Exhibit 3 - Instructor’s Course Preferences

BAAS1 BAAS2 BAAS3 BAAS4 BAAS5 BAAS6 BAAS7 BAAS8

Berry 4 3 5 0 0 1 0 0
Camacho 3 0 3 5 0 5 0 0
Gerard 1 3 3 0 0 5 0 5
Lee 5 5 3 0 0 0 0 0
Miller 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 0
Pierre 3 5 5 0 0 1 0 0
Qi 3 5 1 0 5 1 0 0
Suarez 1 1 3 0 0 5 5 0
Source: Built by the authors based on the department data

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 Exhibit 4 - MWF Class Time Preferences

9:10 10:20 11:30 1:30 2:40 3:50 5:25

Berry 1 3 3 5 5 5 0
Camacho 1 1 1 1 1 5 5
Pierre 1 5 5 5 3 3 0
Qi 3 5 5 5 1 3 3
contingent 1 1 1 1 1 0 0
Source: Built by the authors based on the department data

Exhibit 5 - TuTh Class Time Preferences

8:15 9:50 11:25 1:00 2:35 4:10 6:00

Gerard 1 5 5 1 3 5 1
Lee 1 5 5 5 3 3 0
Miller 5 0 0 0 0 0 0
Suarez 1 5 5 5 5 5 0
contingent 1 1 1 1 1 1 0
Source: Built by the authors based on the department data

Exhibit 6 - Course Loads and Seniorities

Required Course Load Seniority *

Berry 3 2
Camacho 2 4
Gerard 3 3
Lee 3 2
Miller 1 10
Pierre 3 6
Qi 3 6
Suarez 3 5
contingent N/A 1
Coefficient assigned by the department chair based on rank and years of service.
Source: developed by the authors based on the department data

Siena College: Course Scheduling for the Business Analytics 9

Department
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 Exhibit 7 – Instructor’s Qualifications
BAAS1 BAAS2 BAAS3 BAAS4 BAAS5 BAAS6 BAAS7 BAAS8
Berry 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0
Camacho 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Gerard 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Lee 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1
Miller 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0
Pierre 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1
Qi 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1
Suarez 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Source: Developed by the authors based on the department data

Exhibit 8 - Required Number of Sections for the Spring Semester

BAAS BAAS BAAS BAAS BAAS BAAS BAAS BAAS

Course
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Required Number of Sections 2 6 5 1 1 6 1 1
Source: Department data

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