BIS student Sukhpreet Singh, left, speaks with Oberto Brands representative Felicity Pau.
Business information systems students and representatives from 23 private- and public-sector organizations came together at the CH2M HILL Alumni Center the evening of Tuesday, Feb. 3, for their annual Meet the Firms event.
Meet the Firms is a networking opportunity for Oregon State’s roughly 150 BIS students and potential employers from around the state.
The College of Business’ Career Success Center hosts the event.
Participating organizations were Cambia Health Solutions, Con-way Enterprise Services, Daimler, Deloitte & Touche, Huron Consulting Group, IBM, Jive Software, KPMG, Mu Sigma Inc., Nike, Northwest Evaluation Association, Oberto, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Rubicon International, Providence Health Systems, Samaritan Health Services, The Standard, TEC Equipment, TKW and Zones, as well as the city of Portland, the Oregon Legislature and OSU.
Ojes Athyantha and Thomas Keough were two of the approximately 100 students in attendance. Keough was interested in Daimler, where a cousin had interned, whereas Athyantha gravitated early on toward Mu Sigma.
“They kind of do their own kind of consulting, do their own thing with big data and business analytics,” Athyantha said. “It looks interesting. I’m going to take a look.”
Meet the Firms provides students a chance to sell themselves to potential employers, including telling them about projects undertaken through OSU’s Students of Information Management Club. SIM Club aims to provide real-world problem-solving opportunities designed to make them profession-ready upon graduation. SIM Club meets at 6 p.m. Tuesdays in Austin Hall 270.
Madeline Mill figures her education in business information systems makes her a builder of bridges – the type that links the work of data gatherers and analysts with those who need that information to make effective business decisions.
“I was a double major in BIS and accounting,” says Mill. “I picked up BIS at first to help meet 225 credits, which are required to take the CPA exam. But I soon found out that I enjoyed BIS much, much more than I ever would have thought.”
So much so that upon her graduation, she went to work for professional services giant Deloitte as a consultant.
“A lot of people I met in the college weren’t sure what BIS was exactly, but I just like to explain it as the bridge between management and technical processes,” Mill says. “The things learned in BIS classes help students identify how business processes can be improved with technical solutions.”
At OSU, Mills immersed herself in projects undertaken by the Students of Information Management Club. The biggest one involved researching how the university mitigates risk when changes are made to Banner, Blackboard and other computer systems used on campus.
“We made flow charts of the process and made documentation of the process and potential improvements,” Mill says. “This project allowed me to gain real-world experience and help the OSU community. It also made me attractive to potential employers because I stood out for doing this extra project outside of class for my own learning.”
Members of SIM Club hold signs indicating where their job offers came from.
This year Portland SIM awarded OSU $20,000 in scholarships, up $2,500 from last year.
“Portland SIM has been a model for other SIM programs across the country in raising funds to support BIS programs,” said Byron Marshall, a BIS and Accounting professor at the Oregon State College of Business. “It’s allowed us to award dozens of scholarships in the past few years.”
Portland SIM is a leading organization for information technology executives. In addition to OSU the group works with the Oregon Institute of Technology, Portland State University and Washington State — Vancouver.
The increase for Oregon State reflects the growth in the BIS program, which has been steadily growing over the past decade.
“We’ve been doubling in the past few years,” said Rene Reitsma, director of the BIS program at OSU.
Reitsma said BIS programs struggled after the Dot Com crash of the early 2000s. OSU had around 30 BIS students after the crash, but has grown to around 90 this year, Reitsma said.
He attributes part of the growth to an increased interest in programming, especially after the introduction of the iPhone and other products that made computing cool again.
Some BIS programs also changed their curriculum to try to draw more students attracted to the business side, Reitsma said, something Oregon State never did. He said that strong base in technology — and having faculty able to teach it — gave Oregon State an advantage when students again wanted a more technical degree.
“I think the reason we survived is that many programs threw away all their tech pieces,” Reitsma said. “We never did that and took a risk and said we’re not going to do that. We stayed with technology and survived.”
College of Business student Parker Edwards on his internship this summer with Alaska Airlines.
Oregon State College of Business student Parker Edwards heard a familiar phrase over and over this summer.
“I don’t know if this is possible, but …”
The Business Information Systems major spent his summer in Seattle with Alaska Airlines as a systems and process intern. Working with maintenance and engineering, Edwards’ job was to structure the huge amount of data connected to every aircraft and make it easier to find areas needing repair.
“I love data,” Edwards said. “It’s so powerful. People get really excited. Someone would come in and say, I don’t even know if this is possible, but if you can find a way … if I could click a button.”
Edwards was just one of a number of College of Business students who worked around the country and the world this summer as interns with some of the biggest companies in their industries.
Edwards’ role with Alaska combined his interest in technology and problem solving with his love of aviation.
“I want to get my pilot’s license as soon as I get out of school,” he said. “Also working with an airline that’s as prominent in the northwest as Alaska was a great opportunity.”
Interning with an airline also comes with perks beyond great experience.
Between his time as a system and process analysis intern with Alaska, Edwards and other interns flew free around the west coast and to Alaska and Hawaii. Edwards’ favorite trip was a day in Honolulu, leaving in the morning and returning the next day.
Edwards also had a great view at the office.
“Because it’s at the hangar, you can go downstairs at any given time and there would be 747s and just outside the door it’s SeaTac International Airport,” he said. “That was probably the coolest thing I could do there.”
Georgia Brown on her internship with Daimler Trucks North America.
Georgia Brown is still finishing her summer internship with Daimler Trucks North America in Portland.
That’s because Brown is part of MECOP. The prestigious, Oregon industry-sponsored program places students in a pair of paid six-month internships with some of the biggest firms in the Northwest.
“The most appealing thing about it was the fact that I would graduate with a year’s worth of work experience in my major,” Brown said. “I’m not exactly sure what I want to do once I’m out of college and having the chance to work for some of the most competitive companies in the Northwest is a great way to find out.”
As a project management intern in the Daimler IT Finance department, Brown works as an analyst for her group, bringing together research from different sources to create easy-to-comprehend reports on a variety of topics.
“Since I started my internship, I’ve developed the department’s Sharepoint site, created a customer relationship database in Access, and am working on documenting and learning TM1,” she said. “My knowledge of IT in general has improved and developed way more than I ever thought it would.”
Beyond the valuable real-life experience, Brown said her internship has helped her learn more about what she wants out of her own career.
“I’ve talked to students before who are hesitant to do an internship because they don’t know if they would enjoy that field, but I think this is the best way to try different career options and see what works for you,” she said.
In the School of Design and Human Environment Internship Program, more than 163 students completed internships during the 2012- 2013 school year with more than 109 companies. Overall, 11students interned in New York City’s Garment District, eight in Los Angeles and three internationally.
Through the program, facilitated by SDHE Internship Coordinator Sandy Burnett, students take a preparatory class before their internship and then a “Field Experience” course during, with weekly check-ins to mark progress and goals.
Merchandising Management student Kahli Lanning interned with Donna Karan during the summer, where she was able to work with teams from Donna Karan Japan.
“Getting to sit in on their meetings and being able to practice my Japanese in a business setting was a great experience for me,” Lanning said. “It is a great program, and I think the experience I gained will be invaluable to my future career.”
