Improving the academic programming process in a school of nursing using computational modeling and simulation

In recent years, academic institutions have been challenged to search for new methods to provide high quality education and research at an affordable cost. This study used a unique methodology, computational modeling and simulation, to investigate faculty productivity at a school of nursing from 2004 till 2007. A model of the academic programming process was built in Arena, a discrete event simulation software package. The model predicted significant improvements in baseline faculty percent effort (PE) after reducing variation in class distribution throughout the week, combining classes with enrollment of 10 or less, adding additional faculty and standardizing PE policies. Performance metrics for faculty productivity showed significant improvement post implementation of recommendations in 2007.