Ashur Webster interned in Alabama before beginning the master’s degree portion of his 4+1 program
It’s one thing to study transportation, logistics and supply chain issues in a classroom at the Daniels College of Business. It’s another to get hands-on experience working in those areas behind a desk at a rocket-launch company aimed at harnessing the potential of outer space.
That’s what Daniels graduate student Ashur Webster found out last summer, when he interned at United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) rocket manufacturing site in Decatur, Alabama.
“We shipped all of our rockets from Alabama to Florida to be launched, and I was part of the team doing voyage configurations, moving giant pieces of rocket equipment onto boats, and things like that,” Webster said. “It was a great experience to be part of the management process that goes along with that,” he said. “I also got to work with the inventory planning and control team. I worked with the procurement people, I talked to suppliers, I wrote up scopes of work and requested quotes. It opened my eyes to a lot of different sides of supply chain logistics.”
Flexibility and broad reach
Webster, who grew up in Napa, California, was part of the Daniels management program as an undergraduate—a program he chose because of its flexibility and applicability to many different fields.
“The faculty do a good job of keeping the major pretty broad,” he said. “I picked management because I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do yet, and I wanted to get a lot of experience in various different things.”
Among the most valuable skills he learned in the management program was how to communicate more effectively, Webster said.
“A lot of people seem to lack the ability to have a conversation and talk to people,” he said. “The biggest thing I took away, in terms of successful business making, is how important it is to be able to sustain a conversation and build relationships. A lot of management classes homed in on the students’ ability to communicate within groups, to step out of their comfort zone and present ideas. It was a great business foundation to build those conversational skills.”
Jumping in the deep end
Webster said the internship was a great way to put those lessons into practice, as well as those he is currently learning as a business analytics student in the Daniels 4+1 program—which allows him to earn both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in just five years.
At ULA, Webster’s duties included cost simulations, KPI analysis and Power BI development, as well as optimizing logistics workflows, supporting critical supply chain initiatives, and leveraging data analysis and visualizations.
“I didn’t have a lot of prior experience, but it was a good learning opportunity to jump in the deep end and talk to some of the other data scientists there,” he said. “We had a lot of meet-and-greets with the ULA executives, which was a great opportunity to ask them questions and talk one on one with them.”
High impact
Webster says the internship coordinators at ULA did a good job of giving the student workers projects that kept them engaged and made them feel like they were, in part, responsible for the company’s success.
“The projects they gave us were more meaningful and impactful than in some of the other internships I’ve had,” he said. “The things we were doing actually mattered. It was a very motivational experience. I felt attached to the business by the end, which is rare for an internship, given you’re only there for 10 weeks. I felt really invested in the process.”
So invested, in fact, that Webster will continue his experience with ULA next summer, working at the company’s Denver location in a supply chain role.
“I will work on procurement, contracting, things like that,” he said. “They’re also interested in more analytical features within their supply chain, so hopefully I’ll be able to utilize some of the skills I’m learning currently in the analytics program.”