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Darla Moore School of Business

Taiwanese undergraduate IB student capitalizes on experiential learning opportunities

Image of Chelsea Chang

Senior Chelsea Chang has made the most of her time with the Moore School. Going into her last semester in fall 2021, she has completed three internships, including teaching in Taiwan, and was able to study abroad in Germany.

Originally from Taiwan, Chang took advantage of a sister state agreement USC offers so she was able to receive in-state tuition. While she tried on several functional majors alongside her international business major, Chang chose operations and supply chain for her required second major.

She credits the versatile business core courses with helping her choose her functional major; a required operations and supply chain core course cemented her decision.

In addition to such diverse business core courses, “the second and more important reason prospective students should choose the Moore School is the amount of support we get from the faculty in our major-specific courses,” Chang said. “As I began to take higher-level classes, I was truly amazed by the dedication of the professors to their courses and the development of their students.” 

Heading into her final semester with graduation in December, Chang already has a lengthy resume to impress future employers.

Before coming to South Carolina, Chang spent the summer between her freshman and sophomore years as a teaching assistant in Taipei City, Taiwan, teaching and preparing high school students for the grammar, reading, essay and math sections of the SAT and ACT entrance exams.

In her first semester her sophomore year, she interned with IndustryPro, where she assisted in acquisition searches for private equity clients.

The spring of her sophomore year, she was an operations assistant and intern for Long Firm Trading, a fruit import company in Taiwan. There she used her operations and supply chain skills to analyze and update sales statistics to identify unprofitable suppliers, customers and products.

For her junior spring semester, Chang was a research assistant for a Ph.D. candidate who was examining managing alliances in the biopharma space.

“Through reading academic journals and papers on the nature of relationships between large pharmaceuticals and small biotech companies, I was able to further understand strategic alliances and see its application in practice,” she said. “The topic was also highly interesting to me because of my interest in the pharmaceutical industry, as well as the growing importance of biopharma alliances in developing a COVID-19 vaccine at the time. An added benefit of this research assistant role for me was the opportunity to get a look into pursuing an MBA and a Ph.D. as a potential path after obtaining my bachelor’s.”

Along with her experiential learning experiences, Chang also studied abroad in Munich, Germany, for a semester.

“Living in Munich for four and a half months allowed me to explore once again living on a different continent,” Chang said. “I’ve always been curious about the livability of Europe, especially with my approaching graduation date. The opportunity to study abroad in central Europe gave me the chance to travel throughout the continent.”

While Chang was a super involved student off campus with her internships and study abroad opportunities, she also made the most of her time on campus. She has been involved in the Applied Analytics Club, the Taiwanese Student Association, Kappa Delta Sorority, as a community assistant in USC Housing and with the Swype Dance Organization.

“It's very difficult for me to pick a most impactful experience I've had in the past 3 years because all of them have been so rewarding! If I had to pick, I would say the most impactful experience I had was my operations assistant internship with Long Firm Trading in Taiwan,” she said. “It was the perfect combination of my two majors — the company was located in Taiwan but has supply chains with China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam. I got to learn about real-life global supply chain application, as well as the intercultural conflicts that arise with them.”

While she’s still figuring out her next steps, Chang said she is grateful for all of the opportunities the Moore School has afforded her and that her professors have prepared her well for her future career.


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