Career Exploration Program Adds Tracks in Supply Chain, Real Estate

Syracuse University’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management hosts career exploration trips that are built into the fabric of the undergraduate experience. The forays to New York City to meet with alumni and visit businesses give students a firsthand look at career tracks and inroads with alumni working in those industries.

This academic year, for the first time, every Whitman School undergraduate major will be included in the programming on the three- to four-day trips. In January, two new career paths were included: supply chain and real estate, as well as a reimagined retail track. “Our goal for this current academic year was to be able to offer something for every undergraduate major or program that we have, and we've been able to do that,” says Director of Career Services Kara Primrose.

“Seeing all perspectives”

Emma Bradley ’23 started out as an architecture major, but changed majors to real estate because she was more interested in the development side than the design side. Because she came to her major two years into college, she wanted to quickly get up to speed on the career options available. 

“I need to find exactly what I want to do but the only way I'm going to be able to do that is if I really dive into seeing all perspectives of real estate,” she says. “The trip was a great thing for me because I could figure out all different sides of real estate, whether that was retail within brokerage or even development, whether that was student housing or just regular development projects.”

The real estate trip included visits to a number of offices and projects, including retail, student housing, residential and office space. “Every person we met, they always said relationships were the biggest part about real estate,” Bradley recalls. “And I kind of took that and ran with it.”

Bradley didn’t just learn about career paths in real estate on the trip, she used the opportunity to land an internship for the summer of 2023 with Lee & Associates. The road to her internship started by meeting Syracuse alumnus Woody King ’13, a director in the firm’s New York office, during the trip.

Connections and opportunities

According to Director of Alumni Engagement Alison Kessler, this wasn’t the only internship to come out of the January real estate trip. “Our alumni are overwhelmingly willing to give back and help the next generation, and the students obviously get incredible value from engaging with them,” she notes.

According to Primrose, most participants are sophomores. She says the trips often solidify a student’s major and career path, or help the student realize “it’s not what I wanted it to be” and begin considering alternatives. 

Ilana Lefkowitz ’25 was always interested in fashion and retail but “never imagined myself in business school.” She changed her major from marketing management to retail management because of all the opportunities in retail. She wants to start her career in a large, well-established company, and the trip allowed her to see a range of work environments. “Seeing real world experiences, or the industry in general just helped me see what the things I'm learning about in the classroom really are,” says Lefkowitz.

Real-world experience

Retail management and supply chain management students paired up for several site visits. As with the real estate trip, students in the new supply chain track visited a variety of businesses, including Kohl’s, Macy’s, KPMG, Mainfreight and more. Supply chain students even participated in a quintessential New York City area commuter experience of riding a New Jersey Transit train, which took them to visit businesses in Bound Brook and Newark. During their visit to a Mainfreight warehouse location in Newark, they ate lunch with employees in the onsite lunchroom.

Showing students different work environments is an important part of the career exploration trips. “We've been everywhere,” Primrose says. “We've been to glamorous places where they're passing diamond jewelry around so students can become familiar with products. We've had to wash our own dishes at companies who strive to be sustainable. There's places that are really cool and fun and have plenty of snacks. There's others that are a little bit more hands on and you can tell everyone loves working there…It's really cool to get a gut feel for the culture of a place, the priorities of a place, just by physically being in the space.”

The Orange advantage

In addition to learning about businesses and career paths, the trips also give students a chance to hone soft skills. Before each trip, students prepare their resumes and attend an orientation. Events during the trips give students a low-pressure environment to network with a receptive group of alumni, as well as with one another.

James Crane ’25 participated in the supply chain trip. One of his favorite parts of the trip was a mock interview at FTI Consulting. Students were divided into small groups and given a case study to discuss with employees. Crane appreciated the insight employees provided into the student responses to the case study. 

There are many ways for alumni to participate in the career exploration trips. For example, they can speak in panel discussions, host site visits and meet with students at networking receptions. Primrose says it’s “always a treat” when someone she worked with as a student gets involved as an alum.

With their multiple facets of education and relationship building, the career exploration trips are a microcosm of the entire Whitman experience, now with opportunities available for all undergraduate majors. As second-year student Crane says, “This was just one key part of that experiential learning that Whitman has that I think is very unique to the school that not a lot of other business or management schools offer.”