Simulation of a University as a Dynamical System

Abstract

Dynamical systems describe how complex physical and artificial systems change over time. One such system is a university. The state of a university is described by its endowment, enrollment, research funding, graduation rate, and other characteristics. The Office of Institutional Research at University of Maryland, Baltimore County has been collecting data on characteristics of UMBC in a data warehouse since 1995. We define these characteristics as state variables in our model and formulate deterministic and stochastic equations to describe the relationships among them while utilizing feedback loops in the model to generate cyclical effects of variable relationships. We build the code in MATLAB to simulate this system for UMBC and use a graphical user interface (GUI) to visualize each variable as the university evolves. This model is dependent upon both time and user interactions with initial values of state variables. Our final code models and produces visualizations of the state of the university as it changes over time as well as simulates “what-if” scenarios to aid in campus-wide discussion regarding growth.