Supply Chain graduate students Bivisha Karki and Dana AlRifai began their nine-month rotational internship at Bunge on Monday. (Photo by Derik Holtmann)
Two graduate students in the Department of Supply Chain and Analytics at the University of Missouri–St. Louis are embarking on an innovative, collaborative and ground-breaking internship opportunity with three of St. Louis’ premier companies along different stages of the supply chain.
Bivisha Karki and Dana AlRifai, both of whom are pursuing their Master’s in Supply Chain Analytics, will spend the first three months of their nine-month UMSL Rotational Internship Program at Bunge, then three months at World Wide Technology and three months at Anheuser-Busch. Karki and AlRifai started at Bunge on Feb. 3.
“The goal is to create a rotational experience where the students move from one company to another, to see how the supply chain functions as a whole,” said Jill Bernard Bracy, an associate teaching professor and the acting director of UMSL’s Supply Chain Risk and Resilience Research Institute. “They’ll start with the early stages of production, where oilseeds are processed and distributed at Bunge. At World Wide Technology, they’ll explore how information flows connect the supply chain, and finally, at Anheuser-Busch, they’ll see the distribution of finished goods to consumers.”
And the best part: The companies are coordinating their efforts. All three are represented on the Supply Chain department’s advisory board, which makes such a comprehensive project possible.
“They’re working together to make sure that the assignments at each of the companies tie together,” Bracy said. “The rotations with the companies aren’t going to be in isolation. The companies themselves are working together to make sure the projects are going to have a nice flow to connect all of these concepts together.”
Advisory board member Brett Caplice, the vice president of North American refined and specialty oils at Bunge, came up with the idea for this comprehensive internship program while sitting in an advisory board meeting three years ago, as the group was talking about ways to entice graduates of UMSL’s supply chain department to stay in St. Louis after graduation.
“It seemed like a lot of the best young talents thought they would have better opportunities in a bigger city like Chicago, so I thought a good way to showcase all of the opportunities available in our area was to expose students to as many of our good companies as possible,” Caplice said. “It’s better than just a career fair. This is a way to let students know our community more deeply. Companies will get the benefit of meeting smart and ambitious students, and students get the benefit of seeing many more career opportunities in depth.”
The question – How do we do a better job of keeping St. Louis talent in St. Louis? – is one asked often by departments across UMSL, and this rotational internship is a great solution. Making it become a reality, though, involved a lot of behind-the-scenes coordination over the past few years.
“It’s not as simple as putting a student in a company and having them do an internship one semester and moving on,” Bracy said. “A lot of people had to come together from the UMSL side, from the UM System side and from the individual companies to make this happen – everybody from HR to legal to finance and others.”
Bracy credits Jamie Liston, UMSL’s interim executive director for workforce integration and strategic partnerships, for spearheading the effort.
“UMSL is working to better coordinate how we bring industry-driven ideas to life,” Liston said. “There’s a reason programs like this are rare – it’s not easy to put them together. But the value is clear. These students will experience the industry firsthand, from seed to product to distribution.
“Our goal is to connect the workforce to industry, growing regional economic development while creating meaningful opportunities for our students. We want them to see that global innovation is happening right here in St. Louis, and that this is a great place to build their careers with the skills they’ve gained at UMSL.”
The commitment from the advisory board made the project a reality.
“To me it says that UMSL Supply Chain is a great place to recruit talent,” Caplice said. “And not just entry-level talent, but talent that can join these companies and make a difference on day one. It shows that these companies are bought in to the success of UMSL and the supply chain program, and vice versa. It shows that the university is a place where business and community meets, to the betterment of both.”
Bracy said AlRifai and Karki are ideal candidates for this inaugural rotational internship.
“They are both phenomenal,” she said. “Our goal was to select students who could not only showcase our program in the best possible way but also gain a meaningful learning experience from it. These two students are incredibly bright and highly data-driven. They have a strong grasp of analytics, which is a cornerstone of our program. We’re excited to place them in roles and opportunities that highlight their analytical skills and the training they’ve received.”
Both are, obviously, excited about starting the rotational internship.
“This is an incredible opportunity, especially since all three companies are global leaders in their respective fields within the supply chain industry,” said Karki, who came to UMSL after working as an SQL Data Engineer in Nepal. “I hope to gain hands-on experience in real-time supply chain operations, understand how extensive supply chain networks are managed daily and learn about the teamwork involved in making these operations successful. Additionally, I want to explore how large-scale supply chain data is handled and identify the key differences in workflows and operations among these companies.”
AlRifai, who chose UMSL after building a career in quality assurance in Jordan, noted that making connections at prestigious companies like Anheuser-Busch, Bunge and World Wide Technology was appealing, too.
“Having the opportunity to move through the rotations will help me better understand the work environment in multiple industries and apply the knowledge I gained at UMSL into hands-on experience,” she said. “It’ll also help me network with more people within the field and introduce myself and my skills, which I hope will convert into full-time employment in the future.”
When the rotational internship wraps up in December, AlRifai and Karki will make a presentation to all three companies showing what they learned from the whole experience and also how the supply chain is connected through these three companies.
The hope, Bracy and Liston said, is that this is just the first of many similar comprehensive and collaborative internship opportunities in the future.
“Right now we have three companies and three rotations, but we’d like to bring on more companies to participate,” Bracy said. “I feel like the blueprint is now ready, which is the exciting part. Now we have a model that we can work with to provide this opportunity for other programs.”
