Chelsea Hochstetler’s dedication for logistics earned her the first ever $1,000 scholarship from the Logistics Indiana Summit.

The junior industrial engineering major wasn’t always interested in engineering and logistics, but had always wanted to work with horses but she wanted a job that would give her a good living, she said.

“Actually, one of my math teachers started me in engineering. I came to USI thinking about civil engineering and then whenever I was in the UNIV 101 class for engineering they had speakers come in for each of the different types of engineering,” she said. “so I got to listen about the industrial engineering and I loved it. That’s what made me choose it.”

Hochstetler completed a project for the early undergraduate research program through Pott College over the summer.

“I was working with one of my industrial engineering professors and he found this research project from talking with INDOT and Ports of Indiana,” she said. “This project was looking at bringing steel coils from the northern Indiana steel mills, which is in Gary and Chicago area, to the southern Indiana (steel mills) in Jeffersonville.”

The project Hochstetler completed was applicable for the first Indiana Logistics Summit scholarship, which is sponsored by Ports of Indiana, Conexus, Purdue University and Vincennes University. She submited the report as part of her application for the scholarship.

“It was great to be selected for the scholarship. It was an honor,” she said. “I felt very appreciated and very glad to be there. I got to go up on stage and it was presented to me in front of 300 people and it was really great.”

Before accepting the scholarship, Hochstetler, along with other logistic students attended a two-day event where they learned about logistic crisis and ways to solve them.

“The summit title was Solving the National Transportation Crisis and so a lot of people went into it thinking, ‘I didn’t even know there was a logistics crisis,” she said. “The first day was telling us more about what the issues are in Indiana and what we’re having trouble with transportation-wise. And then the second day they had different speakers about what we can do to solve the problem; what technological advances were making to provide that help.”

While majoring in industrial engineering, Hochstetler also founded the Engineering and Manufacturing club here on campus.

“There wasn’t any industrial engineering clubs here. They had some for civil, they had some for electrical and mechanical and I didn’t really fit into any of those categories,” she said. “I wanted something that industrial engineers could get into.”

Presently, the club brings in speakers from each field of engineering to help students network with companies and decide which field they are most interested in.

After the club has officially taken off, Hochstetler plans on doing more with it in the future.

“We may have possible projects in the future, but right now we are just trying to get it up and running with the networking and the speakers,” she said.

After getting her undergrad, Hochstetler said she plans to stay in school for another year to complete her Masters of Business Administration.

“I want to team up with economics, and maybe finance, to maybe help in a manager position with companies,” she said. “And after that, get a job. I really like the logistics field so I’m looking into some with logistics or project management.”

After receiving the Logistics Indiana Summit scholarship, she was able to network with some of her favorite companies.

“It’s kind of a dream to work for UPS. I would really like to do that,” she said. “Actually, from this opportunity, I was able to talk with a few other companies as well so I might be looking at UPS, Conexus, and Ports of Indiana.”