Leave it to an Aggie business student to save a U.S. government agency nearly $2 million on a single summer project. Senior finance major Jennifer Campbell spent a summer 2005 internship with the Department of Commerce — and in only one of many high-level assignments, she saved the department more than $1.8 million with a reconciliation of staff counts submitted by the State Department under the Capital Security Cost Sharing Program.

In the cost-sharing program, State determines how much to charge other government agencies for the use of U.S. diplomatic facilities in foreign countries. Campbell found 17 international cities were there were major discrepancies in State’s count of total Commerce employees in those embassies. After weeks of correspondence with overseas posts, she verified that 61 positions were incorrectly charged to Commerce. That resulted in a cost savings of $1.83 million ($30,000 per position per year).