Chase Wolfle ’18
Education: MS Management Information Systems Internship: Professional: PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC); Chicago, IL PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC); Chicago, IL |
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Describe your career and what led you to your current position. My career for the first five years of college was an athlete, where I did not take full advantage of the education in my hands. It was my super-senior year that I realized I needed to get my act together and put forth more of an effort regarding academics because athletics would not last forever. In my current position at PwC, I work alongside clients, advising them how to best utilize their information technology in order to meet their business objectives and/or over come problems, all while improving structure and efficiency of IT systems in various organizations. What were your job responsibilities in your internship? How did the MS-MIS program prepare you for this position? During my internship with Ernst and Young, I worked many hours on extraction, transformation, and loading of data into various collections of databases. The method used by the company for performing this action was through countless excel spreadsheets. Having had taken Dr. Arun Sen’s Data Warehousing class, I knew there was an effortless and increasingly more productive process to extract, clean, and then load this data. After consultation with the information technology team, I had Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services loaded onto my laptop, reducing the time it took to clean this data 80 percent. Without the data warehousing class, I would have never understood the importance of clean data in an organization, or the means by which you can perform the above task. What was your favorite course at A&M? ISTM 637 – Data Warehousing was my favorite course through the MS-MIS program, but it was also the hardest. The class prepared me for my internship, but in a way where we identified every aspect of the bottom-up and top-down process. The semester-long project was also fruitful in applying the knowledge acquired in class to real-world problems, therefore, enabling us to provide real-world solutions. What was the most beneficial course you took at A&M? The most beneficial course I took during my Masters was ISTM 643 – Corporate Information Planning. The class was the most advantageous because my job requires me to identify, fix, and provide solutions to problems in a similar manner in which we did in the class. Why did you pursue a master’s degree? I feel like we live in a world where undergraduate degrees are too easy to obtain. This reason alone encouraged me to pursue two more years of schooling. Therefore, in 10 years when a company is making cuts, I will have one more reason for the company to keep me on the team as opposed to someone the others. What advice do you have for someone who is considering returning to school to earn a master’s degree? Do it! First, You will grow personally, gain a greater perspective on things, and make lifelong friends. Secondly, the employment opportunities are better. Lastly, there’s an increased opportunity for career advancement, and you will notice a return on your investment quicker than you think. What is the biggest reward for earning your MS-MIS degree? The biggest reward for me was lifelong friends. I have gained more knowledge from my peers than I will from any classroom setting. I was very Americanized from 23 years in the USA, but my friends from other countries allowed me to see the world through a different lens. Opening my mind to a different perspective and understanding of the problems faced inside and outside the classroom. |
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