Full-time Mba Graduate Assistants Help Y-12 Extend Its Reach "beyond The Fence" For Business

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Bill Nalls and Will Chappell are part of a second wave of students who are participating in the Y-12/Oak Ridge Associated Universities Full-time MBA Graduate Assistantship program with the University of Tennessee's (UT) College of Business. The partnership was launched during the summer of 2008 as a means to help the Y-12 National Security Complex extend its reach to the outside world and find commercial applications for its technologies.

The first two students in the program, Ned Morgan and Ravi Chirravuri, performed research and business analysis to determine the value of Y-12 technologies. Chirravuri said they "wanted to give a glimpse of what private industry is thinking." University of Tennessee Full-time MBA students Bill Nalls, left, and Will Chappell, right, are participants in the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU)/Y-12 National Security Complex Full-time MBA Graduate Assistantship program. Students in the program are hired by ORAU as temporary employees to perform business development tasks for Y-12, such as creating business cases to support technology assessment and evaluating potential market opportunities ...
... for technologies developed at Y-12. Click image for larger version.

The students recommended more communication with outside companies and providing market research assistance early in the development process. If the inventors know that they are going to receive free, substantial market research information, they may be more motivated to pursue technologies for the private sector, the students said.

Chappell and Nalls are building on what the first interns began.
Nalls said that they are applying what they learned in the Full-time MBA program to do market research, business case development, project management aid or general assistance. Chappell added that he and Nalls are making their services available not only to the Y-12 Technology Transfer Office but also to Y-12 operations at large. The students are researching markets for the personal annunciation device, which may be the world's smallest, self-arming, multiple-use accident notification device, according to Peter Angelo, the leader of the Y-12 research and development team that invented it. The device won an R&D 100 Award in 2007.

Also among the many projects that Nalls and Chappell are pursuing is the development of templates for future market research at Y-12. "We've been able to assist in a lot of things here at Y-12, including facilities infrastructure and services, as well as metrics and productivity improvement," Chappell said. The interns in this graduate assistantship have evaluated Y-12's shipping and receiving supply chain vendor to end-user process, performed due diligence for numerous invention disclosures that were reviewed for commercial potential and initiated a background search for Y-12's security technologies and products.

Y-12's Director of Integration and Partnerships Tom Berg said that tapping into the expertise of the graduate students is financially important to Y-12 because it cannot afford to maintain "a standing army for tech transfer." According to Berg, the intern program is forming more expansive relations with UT's business school, which will help build Y-12's future work force.

"I absolutely recommend this to other students," Chappell said. "Tom Berg does a great job of facilitating student opportunities in this program."
Nalls agreed, adding that interaction with top management was the most valuable aspect of the program to him. "I think the single greatest feature of the Y-12/ORAU internship program is the face time students receive with high levels of management," Nalls said. "My time at Y-12 allowed me to interface with top NNSA/DOE officials and numerous vice presidents at the plant. Those connections allowed me to network into opportunities across Oak Ridge and Knoxville. The internship really opened the door for me—once it was opened, all I had to do was work hard and uphold the UT Full-time MBA brand."

This assistantship has been a springboard for Nalls into a new venture that he intends to pursue during fall 2009. He recently became owner of Action Technology Solutions, Inc., a disabled-veteran-owned, electrical contractor and electrical panel shop small business. "The connections I made at Y-12 through the ORAU program networked me into the opportunity and have given me the chance to run my own small business here in Knoxville, Tenn.," Nalls said.

"The University of Tennessee College of Business Administration is extremely pleased to participate, for its second year, in the ORAU/Y-12 Graduate Assistantship Program," said Jan Williams, dean of the college. "We see this program as a win-win-win. Our Full-time MBA students develop required skills, receive mentorship and make network connections; our Y-12 partners receive value-added business thinking; and our college is afforded learning experiences for our students. Also, as a land-grant institution, we are able to 'give-back' to our community. I am confident that Will and Bill will re-enter the business world better prepared to contribute value to the business of their choice based upon this applied-learning experience."

"The Y-12/ORAU University Full-time MBA Graduate Assistantship program bridges UT's College of Business Full-time MBA students with Y-12's technology enterprise," said Cathy Fore, ORAU's director of collaborative initiatives. "This program is opening the door to real-world market research and product analysis for the students and assisting Y-12 in expanding its reach to the commercial market. It also presents a new opportunity for ORAU's member universities to be engaged in a new business area of Y-12 in addition to the traditional scientific collaboration."

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