Students Get Inside Look at Port Operations
Twenty students in Assistant Professor of Information Systems and Operations Management Hamid Pourmohammadi’s classes received a first-hand tour of the Port of Los Angeles last month. Michael DiBernardo, director of research and planning for the port, who is also a Business Advisory Board member, gave the Operations Management and Supply Chain Management students the tour.

DiBernardo first took them on a 90-minute boat trip, providing a water-based view of the facility. The group then visited one of the port terminals. As Pourmohammadi explains, the most important aspect of the field trip was bringing the classroom subjects to life. “Students could see the theories that were discussed in the classroom and observe the implementation of them first-hand,” he says.

 The group was most impressed by the sheer volume of containers that passed through the port as well as the cutting-edge technologies used to make the logistics and goods movement processes more efficient. To help them process and further understand the real-life practices and how they embodied the lectures delivered in class, Pourmohammadi had his students write a report, analyzing the processes they saw in place as well as thinking critically about ways in which they might be improved.

He says an added bonus of the trip was that students got to see the high level of demand for qualified candidates entering into the logistics and supply chain management market, which they could enter if they focused their CBAPP studies on such disciplines. CBAPP has recently launched a logistics and supply chain management concentration in the business administration major to prepare students for such careers.