Fall Internship Experience at The University of Texas System - 2022

The University of Texas System has served the state for more than 135 years, empowering people through education, health care, and research across its 13 academic and health institutions. Awarding more than 67,000 degrees annually (including 1/3 of the state’s undergraduate and most of its medical degrees), it is one of the nation’s largest public university systems. It is a significant driver of economic and social mobility in the state.

I have had the unique privilege of working as a Finance and Data Analyst Intern, but this time, in the Contracts and Procurement department. The department’s mission is to manage the procurement and contracting processes for goods and services that sustain, foster, and support the mission statement of The University of Texas System.?

They strive to maintain efficient operations while adhering to organizational and regulatory requirements of the University, State, and Federal government.?Their goal is to serve their customers in the most timely, efficient, and transparent manner possible.

Working as a member of this department posed quite a few hurdles initially, as I had little-to-no prior knowledge of the complete procurement lifecycle, the terminology, the terms and conditions of a contract, and the evaluation process of a request for proposal from departments. Additionally, the restrictions of a state-funded institution regarding its budgets and contract tenures were alien to me.

I was tasked with multiple responsibilities besides getting well-versed in the domain and understanding its importance, a few of them being:

·???????Standardizing and optimizing the operations and workflows.

·???????Streamlining the data warehousing activities of the team.

·???????Generating KPIs for gap analyses related to the team’s operations and performance.

·???????Generating insights from these KPIs and communicating them through visualizations.

Currently, multiple departments within the UT System are struggling with a shortage of workforce. Hence, another task assigned to me was to analyze this imbalance between the department’s workload and its workforce. I built a narrative about how this imbalance created an ever-increasing backlog of tasks within the department, highlighting the need to address the issue promptly. The resulting solution was to hire more FTEs.

A considerable portion of my work was completed by employing skills I developed during my first year as a Business Analytics student.

These skills included:

·???????Querying data from multiple ERP systems such as Oracle PeopleSoft, IBM’s Content Navigator, etc.,

·???????Performing Exploratory Data Analysis on the queried data using Advanced Excel skills

·???????Generating meaningful insights in the form of visualizations with Power BI

·???????Presenting insights to chancellors and directors

Reflecting on the domain knowledge I’ve gained since the start of this Fall internship term, I feel incredibly proud and humbled by the effort my team and I invested in completing this internship.

Most notably, I familiarized the various operations of the CnP department. I worked alongside some brilliant minds who helped me achieve the vision of creating a dashboard that helped track all their operational metrics. I also had the privilege of meeting many incredible people throughout my internship. My network, consisting of c-level executives, colleagues, mentors, and fellow interns, has grown tremendously.

This internship helped me identify and overcome the disparities in my interpersonal skills and adapt my working style to achieve the goals I set at the workplace. As a result, I established a greater understanding of the functioning of UT institutions and the domain of higher education.?

Lastly, I am grateful to our Program Directors,? Bill Hefley, Ph.D., COP, CMBE ,?and? Gaurav Shekhar , and program managers? Fatima Raad ?and? Sivya Leventhal , for their constant support and encouragement.?#FallIntern?#UTDMSBA?#UTD?#JSOM