Rooted in Agriculture, Ready for Business

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Before Mackenzie Coffman was building dashboards for Tractor Supply Company, she was the person her family called when technology faltered.

The Wi-Fi was down. A phone would not load. Something needed fixing. Her mother's response was familiar, "Kenzie, you can figure it out." Coffman usually did. More importantly, she enjoyed the challenge.

That combination of curiosity and persistence eventually led the Commonwealth University-Bloomsburg information technology and analytics major to Tractor Supply's Store Support Center in Brentwood, Tennessee, where a summer internship gave her a clearer picture of her future and an offer to return after graduation.

But the experience did more than establish a career foothold. It showed Coffman how her Zeigler College of Business education and the Zeigler Institute for Professional Development (ZIPD) has prepared her to contribute, connect, and keep learning.

Coffman's path toward analytics was not immediate. A former high school yearbook editor who enjoyed digital work, she initially considered marketing. She also loved statistics, writing, and understanding why numbers mattered.

Those interests came together in Analytics 325. Working with SAS Viya, she created charts and diagrams, then wrote analyses explaining what the results meant.

"I can tell a story through those numbers," Coffman says.

The course helped her recognize a career direction in business analysis, where she could investigate problems, interpret information, and communicate with people. A sales minor complemented that interest in connection. She could write code but did not want coding alone to define her work. Rather, she wanted to understand the people and decisions behind it.

"I'm very sociable," Coffman says. "I love to talk, have a connection."

Tractor Supply already occupied an important place in Coffman's life.

Raised on a family farm in Huntingdon County where she tends a herd of about 30 goats, Coffman understands the agricultural customers coming through the local Tractor Supply. She began working for there after high school to help pay for college and care for her animals. Over three years, she advanced from team member to team lead.

When another internship opportunity did not materialize, her store manager encouraged her to consider Tractor Supply's corporate program. The recruiting process connected her interests with the Merchandising Business Systems Team, a relatively new group assembled from different departments.

Coffman became its first intern.

At the Store Support Center in Tennessee, she joined a cohort of roughly 45 interns from across the country. Her assignment offered a different view of a business she already knew from the store floor in how systems, information, and cross-functional collaboration supported the work behind the merchandise.

Coffman arrived with a straightforward request.

"I wanted this summer to serve as, like, a sponge," Coffman says. "I wanted to learn as much as I possibly could."

Her team responded with substantive work. She researched competitors, developed an onboarding guide for future team members, and collaborated with another intern in a neighboring department on a data-mapping exercise.

That project brought classroom learning directly into the workplace.

Using SQL and coding skills, she helped map data to its destinations and investigate whether a proposed approach was workable. Other assignments required unfamiliar tools. With little previous experience in Power BI, she worked on a dashboard reset and created a priority dashboard for her team.

The dashboard brought together project requests, priorities and progress, helping colleagues see what needed attention and where work stood. For Coffman, it also offered the creative challenge she enjoyed.

"Big learning curve for me, but it was really fun," says Coffman, adding her coursework meant she could begin contributing without first needing lessons in basic queries or data-management concepts. "It made me feel so much better because I could essentially do more."

Technical knowledge was only part of that readiness.

Coffman says one of the strongest compliments she received concerned her professionalism. Everyday interactions - writing an email, approaching a colleague, participating in a business dinner - made ZIPD's preparation feel immediately relevant.

"The professional etiquette dinner, big one … those resume labs, LinkedIn labs," Coffman says, recalling experiences that helped her present herself confidently.

More broadly, ZIPD had given her practice initiating conversations rather than waiting for someone else to make the introduction. She put that preparation to work, meeting with more than 50 people throughout corporate. Those conversations helped her explore different functions and understand how careers develop.

"Another thing Tractor Supply promotes is meet and greets," Coffman says. "I was kind of an overachiever because I was like, 'well, if I'm here … I might as well.'"

ZCOB's core business courses provided another advantage. Even when a conversation moved beyond her specialty, foundational knowledge of accounting, finance, and supply chain gave her a starting point. She did not need to know everything. She needed enough context to ask questions, follow the discussion and learn.

The summer also challenged Coffman personally.

"I can be a very stubborn person sometimes," Coffman says. "I'll 100% admit that."

The internship challenged her to consider different approaches. Conversations with colleagues revealed that careers rarely followed a single, uninterrupted route. Members of her own team had moved from other functions into their current roles.

That flexibility became one of her most important lessons. There was more than one way to solve a problem or build a career. Before leaving, Coffman received an offer to return through Tractor Supply's six-month merchandising development program. She accepted, with plans to begin in June following graduation.

"I had the best summer ever," Coffman says. "The people were great. I could see myself working there for a long time."

The program would allow her to work with a team while exploring areas such as pricing, merchandising analytics and buying. For a student who wanted both meaningful work and room to keep discovering, the opportunity fit.

Her summer had connected the family farm, the local store floor, and the college classroom with a future she could now envision. The teenager who once figured out why the Wi-Fi would not work is now ready to tackle larger business questions and confident enough to keep asking new ones.

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• Careers
• Information Technology Management (ITM)
• Professional U
• Student Success
• Students
• Zeigler College of Business

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• Information Technology
• Internship