W. P. Carey MBA/MSIM students bring something extra to internships

W. P. Carey MBA/MSIM students returned to the classroom for the start of their second year after some extraordinary experiences. In their summer internships, the eleven students in the dual degree program found themselves in high-level positions, tackling far-reaching projects that called on both their management education and their expertise in information systems.

Evan Thomas spent his summer in East Hartford, Conn., working for aerospace manufacturer Pratt & Whitney, managing $15 million in spending on engine parts. Sivaraja Sudhakar Sugumaran was in Austin, Texas, for the summer at Dell, Inc., where he customized a cloud computing program to help the computer maker minimize the disruption caused by large unplanned orders. At the Phoenix-based global mining company Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold, David Campbell analyzed key equipment needs for 14 of the company's sites in North America, South America, and Africa. The W. P. Carey School's MBA/MSIM dual degree students returned to the classroom for the start of their second year after some extraordinary experiences. In their summer internships, the eleven students in the dual degree program found themselves in high-level positions, tackling far-reaching projects that called on both their management education and their expertise in information systems. And many of the interns left their summer positions with the likelihood of full-time employment offers after they receive their two degrees in the spring. "I've stayed in touch with my boss and my co-workers, and I've been in talks with them about returning to the company," said Kevin Hammons, who interned at Siemens Industry in the global technology company's Atlanta office. "All of my superiors reviewed me very highly and recommended me for a position. If the offer's right and everything lines up, I would be thrilled to go back and work with Siemens again." Said Sugumaran, "I am in touch with some of the people in Dell and would love to work in Dell in the future." Professor Uday Kulkarni, adviser to the MBA/MSIM students, said companies are eager to participate in the internship program. "These are very attractive candidates," Kulkarni said. "Employers look at their information management expertise that as an additional qualification. And then the interns end up doing extremely well for the companies. These are valuable people." Gaining a valuable skill set Launched in 1997, the MBA/Master of Science in Information Management program at the W. P. Carey School is a demanding course of studies. During the day, students take a full MBA course load, and then at night they take the MSIM courses. "It makes for a packed day here, " said Hammons. The 40-hour week internship seemed almost like a vacation, he said, even though he often took work home with him at night. When they finish the two-year program, students are well positioned to lead organizations, according to Kulkarni. Graduates have traditional management skills, as well as information technology skills that are increasingly critical to the success of organizations. "What we do is train students where these two circles overlap," Kulkarni said. "People who understand business as well as technology are very rare today. They tend to be very successful." Summer internships, which usually last 10 to 12 weeks, are required for all dual degree students, who are matched with employers through the business school's Graduate Career Management Center. A better way to purchase paint Brock Oswald's internship this year was in the Chicago office of Deloitte, the global professional services company. His assignment was to assist one of Deloitte's clients — a pair of grocery chains that had just merged — to integrate their supply chains into one system. "It was a new experience for me because I didn't have any consulting background," said Oswald, who had worked for eight years as a project manager in real estate development before starting the W. P. Carey School program. "It was intense, and it was packed full of learning opportunities." Oswald built three theoretical models to evaluate how the systems could be integrated. "It involved collecting massive amounts of data from both companies and then compiling them into a full data set so we could compare different scenarios for the combined company and make a recommendation on which direction they should go," he said. Avik Sengupta did his internship with Mobile Mini, a national mobile office and storage company headquartered in Tempe. His assignment was to source the many different products and services the company uses — everything from business travel to paint for the mobile offices. For the paint procurement, Sengupta devised a reverse auction process using special e-auction software. "The information management part of my program at the W. P. Carey School really helped me to understand the role information technology plays in all of these processes," Sengupta said. "And it's not just about implementing an IT tool. It's also about convincing higher management that this is something that can actually help them down the line." Learning to manage a company — and yourself David Campbell found himself doing a variety of projects for the mining company Freeport McMoRan. He updated and streamlined the company's database of its supply inventory. He condensed and streamlined the company's manual on how to manage its inventory. And he reviewed the way the company prepares its reports and developed tools for improving them. "I was very pleasantly surprised with the projects I was given," Campbell said. "I think my director went out of his way to make those projects very meaningful, and he also blended my two degrees and gave me projects that essentially catered to both of them." During the internship, Campbell also learned some important lessons about managing himself. "I'm a very organized person, but I had to go above and beyond in keeping an accurate record of everything that I did," he said. "I had to juggle multiple projects at the same time. To leave a project, then pick up a few days later where I left off was very difficult and would have been impossible without keeping accurate records." Darian McCollum is president of the Business Information Management Association, which represents students in the joint MBA/MSIM program. His internship was in the Scottsdale office of Henkel, a global company with leading brands and technologies in laundry, home care, cosmetics, toiletries and adhesive technologies. Using both his IT expertise and his knowledge of supply chain management, McCollum explored ways to make the company more profitable. "There was a range of different projects, but the main one was to figure out a way to drive costs down in one of their categories, working with suppliers," he said. One of McCollum's assignments was to analyze and streamline the way the company prepares legal contracts and moves them through the organization. He was able to devise a process map, something he had learned in one of his classes at the W. P. Carey School. "The process map allowed them to visually see what we were talking about, and then we could get buy-in from all of the parties," McCollum said. "We were able to refine the process to get it where everyone wanted it." McCollum said the internship was "a great experience" for him. "It was possible to talk to many of the different executives in the company. I even got a chance to talk to the IT director to figure out what his challenges were. I not only completed my project but I took on other projects where I could see the whole business." Making orders flow smoothly Sugumaran's summer projects at Dell focused on how the company filled its orders, especially those for large enterprises. He created an analytical model that revealed how unplanned large orders affect the performance of the supply chains for normal orders. "I developed and implemented three solutions, including a tool to generate what we called, “Weekly Scorecard — Supply Chain Planning of Large Orders,” Sugumaran said. "I also customized the cloud computing service salesforce.com to reduce the number of unplanned large orders and to avoid supply chain disruptions." Sugumaran said he drew on his classroom experiences to accomplish his internship projects. He said that for most of his presentations he used the concept of process maps, which he learned in his class on Business Process Workflow Analysis. Working for Pratt & Whitney, a subsidiary of United Technologies, Thomas used his knowledge of information systems to discover a problem in the company's supply chain. Two of the company's top tier suppliers were sourcing from the same company, and when orders came in simultaneously, the second tier company was swamped. "Information hadn't been flowing between these different groups," Thomas said. "I was able to come in and set up a system that could prioritize whose parts needed to go first." Gather and analyze Prak Nayak spent her summer in St. Louis, working for the agricultural biotechnology company Monsanto. One of her assignments was to devise a tool that would allow the firm to gather and analyze procurement data from all of its operations around the world. "The data was scattered, so you couldn't calculate all of the performance metrics," said Nayak, who is specializing in supply chain management in her MBA program. "It made it difficult for the managers in the global procurement team to make decisions." In tackling the assignment, Nayak called on knowledge she had gained in the classroom at the W. P. Carey School. "I created a blueprint of what the entire flow of information would look like, and I based it on what I had learned in my last business process class in school," she said. The company now is using the information management tool that Nayak designed to compile and analyze data from its global operations. Before she returned to school, Nayak's manager told her he would love to have her return to the company if there is an opening after she graduates. "He told me they are looking for people who have expertise in supply chain management as well as information systems," she said. "He said they rarely find people with both of those skills."