Learn How to Manage Supply Chains

His college years helped him relate to all kinds of customers and suppliers, including many from other countries. “Meeting the diversity of people at Spring Hill was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me,” Clark said.

He attended Spring Hill partly because some cousins had done so. Also, “Somebody had told me they let you off school for Mardi Gras.”

The college had recently been racially integrated. “I was kind of proud of that.”

Not everyone shared that sentiment. Clark witnessed the Ku Klux Klan’s fumbled attempt to burn a cross in front of Mobile Hall on the night of January 21, 1957. Students were studying for exams when about 25 cars drove onto campus. An article in The Springhillian titled “Night Riders Visit Hill” said a few men were assembling a cross when students poured out of the dorm and began yelling at them.

As Clark remembers it, the screaming students intimidated the klansmen that “only one guy got out of his car. Nobody would help him.” The cars fled back toward Old Shell Road and off the campus, leaving the cross behind. “It was a good break from studying,” Clark said.

The next night, students again chased away robed men in a station wagon who burned a small cross at the Old Shell Road entrance.

During his student days, Clark said, “You had to be in the dorms at 10 o’clock at night.” That’s changed, but the character of The Hill hasn’t. “I just like the smallness of the school. The professors and the students are more connected with each other.”

He has maintained strong ties to the College. A daughter attended and he was a member of the board of trustees for a couple of years.

He is interested in Spring Hill’s new Supply Chain Management major."Supply chains," he said, "represent the principles of economics as they play out in the real world."

“I’m still a real advocate of studying economics itself and understanding what makes things flow in business,” he said, “which is the same thing as the supply chain.”

When he came to The Lilly Company from the military, he remembered those economic principles, but he needed to get up to speed on the nuances of materials handling. He devoured every magazine and trade publication he could find. He even read forklift parts manuals.

“Whatever business you enter,” he advised, “or whatever in life you go into, read everything you can on it.”

Ready to Tackle Supply Chains?

Spring Hill’s new Supply Chain Management program will take full effect in fall 2022, with two separate degree tracks. In four years, students can earn either a Bachelor of Science in Supply Chain Management or, through the 3 + 1 program, a Bachelor of Science in Supply Chain Management and a Master of Business Administration.

The Division of Business presents each track both on campus and online.

As everyone now knows, the supply chain management field offers tremendous opportunities. Students can prepare for careers as logistics analysts, transportation managers, purchasing professionals or other supply chain or logistics professionals. Courses in the major cover supply chain management, purchasing, transportation, global logistics, and warehousing and distribution.

For information, go to SHC.EDU, click Academics, then click Business.

SPRING/SUMMER 2022