One summer while in high school, Rachel Mooreland traveled from her Bartlesville, Oklahoma, home to attend a summer program at the University of Arkansas.
The program introduced her to information systems as a profession and to the Sam M. Walton College of Business.
Rachel was participant in the Technology Awareness Program, sponsored by Walton College’s Information Technology Research Institute, Office of Diversity and Inclusion and Information Systems Department. The program – and Walton – left an impression on her.
“I just remember how friendly and welcoming the staff was,” she says. “I felt like, ‘Wow, this is a really nice community.’“
As high school graduation neared, Rachel wanted to do something a little different, like attend college out of state. Remembering her experiences with the TAP program, she narrowed her college search down to the University of Arkansas, where she enrolled as an information systems major in Walton.
Her transition to campus life began the summer after high school graduation when she participated in the Business Leadership Academy, a residential program for under-represented, newly admitted freshmen that emphasizes retail career choices and opportunities for business majors. The experience also helped her build a “support system” with the other students — many of whom were in her freshman classes and remain close friends. Now a senior, Rachel has returned to BLA as a mentor and, in turn, looks for mentoring from Barbara Lofton, director of Walton’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion, who also helped her secure many of her 15 scholarships.
Rachel is the recipient of the Silas Hunt Scholarship, Wal-Mart ISD Leadership in Technology Scholarship, Technology Awareness Program Scholarship, Minority Business Scholarship, Tyson Foods Mentoring Scholarship, University of Arkansas Academic Scholarship and others.
Rachel has served many roles on campus, including Leadership Walton, a program that combines leadership, academics and professional development. She also was a member of the Dean’s Student Advisory Board. “We got to serve as a voice for so many other students,” she says of herself and fellow board members.
“I feel so much more prepared for the real world.”
Rachel is a member of the Kappa Iota Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., where she uses several techniques learned from the Walton College to conduct business. She served as president of the National Association of Black Accountants’ university chapter, which she says is evolving into a business leadership program. “It gave me a bigger perspective of the different majors at Walton College,” she says.
For the past two years, she has been a marketing intern for Tyson Foods Inc. and will work full time as a marketing assistant on the company’s Bacon Team after graduation.
Rachel says she’s already applying to her job much of what she has learned at Walton. “I feel so much more prepared for the real world,” she says.
