Assigning MBA Students to Field Study Project Teams: A Multicriteria Approach

As the MBA program at the University of South Carolina grew, the task of assigning students to summer field study project teams became more complex. Administrators spent an increasing amount of time struggling with the conflicting objectives of attempting to satisfy student preferences while maintaining some control over the quality and composition of the resulting teams. We developed and implemented a decision support system to automate the process of forming good feasible teams quickly. Using these preliminary assignments as a starting point, administrators can examine preference versus quality trade-offs in arriving at the final assignments with minimal amounts of time and effort.