When Ella Boerger walked into her second summer internship at American Honda Motor Co., her boss handed her a project on day one and told her the team wanted her to lead it. Boerger, a finance major set to graduate from The University of Toledo a year early this spring, remembers the drive home that night distinctly.
“I was like, what did I get myself into?” she said.
Ella Boerger was one of four students who shared the value and impact of their experiential learning journeys with the UToledo Board of Trustees.
What the Fort Loramie, Ohio, native got into was a start-to-finish tariff mitigation project she built from scratch, implemented within three months and used to save her company a significant sum. It’s also a clear example, she said, of what happens when classroom learning meets real responsibility.
From Helper to Project Lead
Boerger first interned with Honda’s Direct Purchasing Division in Troy, Ohio, after her freshman year, working alongside a team that manages supplier relationships and cost planning for vehicle parts. That first summer was about absorption more than ownership.
“My first summer, I was more of a helper,” Boerger said. “I didn’t have any projects of my own. I more or less just worked with my team and learned from them, because Honda is a very big company and there’s a lot of factors that go into everything.”
She returned this past summer to a different role entirely, managing her own portfolio of suppliers and leading a project to identify and mitigate the impact of tariffs on 150 high-impact parts. The work required her to build a tracking system from the ground up, coordinate a team of coworkers, and stay current on shifting U.S. trade regulations by working directly with trade compliance on government reimbursement submissions.
“I cultivated a project from start to finish, developed this new process completely from scratch, and was able to implement it and see it actually going into effect within the three months I was there,” she said. “Sometimes scary, sometimes fun, sometimes stressful, but it definitely helped my project management skills.”
Boerger’s internship is an example of the experience-based learning that plays out over and over for UToledo students and which is now required for all incoming students as part of the Applied Skills for Career Experience, Networking and Development (ASCEND) initiative.
“Ask any UToledo graduate what made the difference in their career, and you’ll rarely hear just ‘my degree.’ You’ll hear about the experience. That means their internship, research project, clinical or performance experience, and the mentors who pushed them further than they thought they could go,” said UToledo President James Holloway. “That’s always been the UToledo difference and, today, we call it what it is: the UToledo Advantage.”
In her second internship with Honda’s Direct Purchasing Division in Troy, Ohio, Ella Boerger managed her own portfolio of suppliers and lead a project to identify and mitigate the impact of tariffs on 150 high-impact parts.
When Classroom and Conference Room Align
Boerger was one of four students who shared the value and impact of their experiential learning journeys during an ASCEND presentation at the Wednesday, Sept. 23, meeting of the UToledo Board of Trustees.
One of the clearest examples of applied learning, Boerger said, came when a class she’d taken the previous spring suddenly became directly useful in a live business setting.
A business course in conflict and negotiation gave her a framework she didn’t fully appreciate until she was leading a supplier negotiation herself and asking an established vendor to remove charges tied to tariffs that were no longer in effect.
“It’s hard when you’re just reading about these potential scenarios in a textbook,” she said. “But when you actually get a chance to apply it, it’s mind-blowing. You’re like, ‘Oh, I’ve seen this. It makes sense.’ ”
That mind-blowing moment came with real stakes attached. Boerger, then 20, found herself leading meetings with managers decades her senior.
“I remember my boss unmuted my computer in the meeting and said, ‘OK, Ella, you’re running the show on this one,'” she said. “I was like, are we for real?”
Skills That Travel, Even When Plans Change
Boerger didn’t set out to pursue estate planning law when she first applied to Honda as a freshman; the goal of law school took shape during her sophomore year, after job shadows convinced her that the legal field — specifically wills, trusts, elder law and long-term care planning — was where she wanted to build a career.
Even so, she said the skills from two summers in corporate supply chain and cost planning will carry directly into whatever comes next.
“I learned so many things like project management, business communication, negotiation and leadership that are transferable,” Boerger said.
With her UToledo graduation in May and plans to attend law school after that, Boerger said that even if her plans shift again in the years ahead, the instinct to practice what she’s learned, rather than just study it, will stick with her.
“I’m a very hands-on learner,” she said. “If I read it, I can only understand it so much. I need to do it, and then it all comes into play.”
