Mighty MBA: Graduate Assistantships

As a full-time MBA student, everyone in the entering class is considered for external graduate assistantships and summer internships with local companies. The Walton Career Development Center helps critique each student's resume and prepare it to be included in the packet sent to the companies willing to hire interns before the January semester even begins. Firms offering internships and assistantships this year included Kellogg, Kraft, Dannon, Tracfone, Walmart, Hershey's, Reckitt, Henkel, Land O'Lakes, and many more. Upon beginning the program shortly after orientation, the firms come to campus and conduct interviews of the students they select from the resume pool. Within a few weeks of beginning the program, many students have offers and begin their assistantships. Those offered graduate assistantships are granted a scholarship and monthly stipend. During the school year, external graduate assistants work 15 hours/week and then summer hours change depending upon the length of the internship. Each position is different depending upon the expectations of the company.

I was fortunate to be offered in January an external graduate assistantship with Kellogg Company working on the Walmart Cereal Team as as Sales Analyst Intern. My tasks include creating Retail Link reports and pulling data, developing access and excel trackers, interpreting sales data and reports, and working on other various projects as assigned by the Cereal Team. I have also been recently assigned a new project to work with the Walmart sustainability initiative and develop a scorecard to measure Kellogg's performance. I've already learned so much from my short time at Kellogg, and I owe so much of that learning to my mentor, John Miller, a second year MBA student from Walton who was just recently hired on full-time at Kellogg. John has been such a valuable resource, and I am so grateful that he has the patience and has taken the time to help me find my role in this assistantship. I still have a lot left to learn, and I am really excited to see where my new sustainability project will take me, but my internship has already lent me so very much. It has been an incredible opportunity, and I look forward to learning even more during my time through next May!