Muhlenberg athletes are spending the summer of 2026 enjoying fantastic experiences on campus, in their hometowns, across the country, and even around the world.
Rising senior football player Owen Shaffer put his majors (business administration, media and communication) and minor (public health) together in his internship with Atlantic Health Systems.
This summer I was given the opportunity to work at the Atlantic Health System distribution center in Whippany, New Jersey. I have been working daily with Oracle Fusion ERP [Enterprise Resource Planning] systems on cycle counting, invoice discrepancy validation, deadstock management, and supporting research on a possible new medical unit. My main project is a facility optimization analysis project focusing on designing a future warehouse built around autonomous mobile robots.
I pursued this internship because I wanted real-world experience in managing a not-for-profit hospital supply chain network. Healthcare is one of the most complex supply chain environments you can work in, with every decision you make directly impacting patient care. With my majors in business administration and media and communication, and my minor in public health, this internship felt like the first real opportunity to put them all in the same room and see what they actually look like together.
The part I enjoy the most is using the skills I learned in my classes in real scenarios. For example, this summer I was tasked with analyzing whether we could feasibly place a six-figure order for multiple products to qualify for a massive discount. I built an Excel model to calculate safe ordering windows to ensure we could meet the quantity needed for the discount without causing excess product to expire.
Though it sounds simple on the surface, this was an extremely major decision that I was excited to help contribute to, and I could not have done it without the professors who taught me these skills at Muhlenberg.
The classes I have taken up to this point at Muhlenberg are the reasons why I have been so successful at this internship. My Management of Not-for-Profit Organizations class taught me how complex not-for-profits organizations can be and allowed me to research their dynamics of supply chain management. Operation and Information Systems laid the groundwork for everything I do day-to-day and has been the most crucial class I have taken so far, and my entire public health curriculum taught me how crucial it is for operations to go right and why what I am doing is so important.
Though I stay busy day-to-day, Atlantic Health has provided many opportunities for career development, volunteer opportunities, and chances to explore multiple fields in healthcare operations. Long term I want to build a career in healthcare supply chain, and this experience has made me more confident than ever that it is exactly the right direction.
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