The University of Georgia ensures that every undergraduate student benefits from hands-on learning, also known as experiential learning (EL), before they graduate. Auxiliary Services is helping undergraduates fulfill this requirement while benefiting from the students’ excitement for their field and love of UGA.
Since last spring, Business Analytics Manager Lianna McAuliffe has supervised four students enrolled in the Terry College of Business while they interned with Auxiliary Business Analytics.
“The students are hungry for these opportunities, and they’re invested in the university as well. If you love coding, analytics, math, and UGA, this is where you want to be. It’s the perfect symbiotic relationship,” said McAuliffe.
Because UGA’s dining, parking, and transit operations are so large, Auxiliary Services offers rich datasets for students to work with and learn from — more than what the students would find at many small businesses.
According to David Akers, associate director of business processes and data analytics, Auxiliary’s analytics platform processes 200 gigabytes of data daily. The data ranges from dining transactions processed by credit card machines throughout campus to bus ridership measured by camera sensors with AI technology to parking permit sales and much more.
When EL students begin their internship, McAuliffe asks them about their main goals and interests, and she curates their assignments to match.
One student wanted to learn the programming language Python, for example, so he used that language to analyze the amount of energy consumed by Central Food Storage freezers, helping Dining Services save money on electricity.
Another student wanted to learn about finance, so she built an app with interactive tools to explore revenue patterns over time, across Auxiliary departments, supporting more informed forecasting and planning.
“I’ve had the opportunity to work with complex datasets and explore behind-the-scenes operations to better understand the data I was analyzing,” said EL student Ria Goraya.
“I also applied the data visualization and coding skills I gained through this internship to my corporate summer internship, where I created a dashboard that helped identify discrepancies in the company’s purchase order data.”
Boosted by the professional experience and contacts they gained from their internship, one of McAuliffe’s EL students was accepted to the MSBA program in the Terry College, and another was hired for a full-time position elsewhere on campus before she graduated.
“During my internship with Auxiliary Services, I worked with website and geographic data from several auxiliary unit sites, offering valuable insight into our communication strategies and target audiences,” said EL student Morgan Busbee. “The experience helped me network across campus and solidified my passion for continuing my career at UGA, where I now serve as a compensation analyst.”
Auxiliary Services administrative offices responsible for finance, contracts and grants, marketing and communications, and project management also have offered EL internships to UGA students.
“Auxiliary has a lot of knowledge and highly professional team members who are working in highly skilled fields that they can transfer to students,” McAuliffe said.
“Seeing their perspective on things Auxiliary Services does makes the work we do in Auxiliary feel more tangible and real. We’re here for them.”