UT Haslam Graduate Supply Chain Students See Firsthand Panama’s Role in International Trade

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Haslam College of Business’ 10-month Master of Science in Supply Chain Management (Global) (MS-SCMG) program brings the world to Knoxville. Both in-person and virtually, supply chain experts from Haslam partner organizations around the globe actively engage program students on topics ranging from operations and logistics to the growing role of AI in supply chain. To ensure participants gain the experiential knowledge needed for international business, the program also takes students out of the classroom and into the world.

Taking Classroom Lessons into the Field

As Tom Goldsby, the Dee and Jimmy Haslam Chair if Supply Chain and David P. Perrot Supply Chain Management Faculty Fellow, quips, “There’s nothing quite like experiencing the world if you want to figure out how to manage its supply chains.”

That is why Goldsby and MS-SCMG students undertook a study abroad experience from January 4-17 as part of a class focused on global supply chain operations. Future cohorts will have the option of studying in Vietnam as well, but the 2026 graduating class’s destination was Panama.

“In the program’s fall semester, we’re providing students with context, preparing them for what they will experience when we travel,” Goldsby explains. “When we’re actually traveling, that fall teaching can resonate and take root.”

Through the Panama experience, MS-SCMG student Rachel Cooper realized she needs to understand all parameters in which a business operates to have a global business perspective.

“In Panama, you can feel how involved the government is in making global trade possible,” she says. “It’s part of how business functions day to day. Seeing that, I realized every country operates differently, so you cannot assume the same structure or expectations everywhere.”

Structured and Unstructured Learning Experiences

The study abroad itinerary is crafted to provide participants with both guided business and cultural site visits, as well as free time for personal exploration. Beyond learning about international business and other cultures, one course goal is for students to gain confidence in unfamiliar situations.

“Our tour guide was fabulous and made those productive and insightful experiences,” Goldsby says. “But it’s not just the structured site visits, it’s also getting out and about and learning how to navigate an international city. They have to think, ‘Is Uber available? Does the Uber driver speak English?’ That immersion experience is critical.”

Business and Trade in Panama

On the business side, the itinerary included visiting the U.S. Embassy in Panama City to learn the U.S. government’s view on Panama’s evolving position in the Americas, taking site visits to representative examples of the nation’s many product distribution centers and observing the Panama Canal’s major Atlantic and Pacific port functions.

From the vast scale of port operations on the canal’s Pacific end, MS-SMCG student Andy Johnson gained a greater appreciation of supply chain’s challenges.

“Standing next to a vessel moving through the locks made the operational reality of it land differently,” Johnson explains. “It’s one thing to analyze a chokepoint on paper and another to stand next to one. That experience changed how I think about infrastructure in supply chain analysis, specifically how easy it is to abstract away physical constraints that are anything but abstract in practice.”

Seeing Panama Canal operations in person also strengthened graduate teaching assistant and MS-SMCG student Kiara Abanto’s international business acumen.

“Experiencing one of the world’s busiest, most-recognized trade corridors and hearing the conversations behind the decisions being made there gives me a strong, real-world reference point I can use when discussing supply chain topics in future job interviews,” she says.

Dicarina, a leading distribution and logistics company in Panama, specializing in mass consumer products, runs one of the distribution centers the cohort visited, which Johnson described as a contemporary analog warehouse environment, with forklifts and conveyor belts. In contrast, the J. Cain Panama Pacifico City Distribution Center was modern and digitally-equipped, with specialized freezer storage reaching negative 80 degrees Celsius. For Johnson, the difference between those two centers suggests that Panama’s logistics sector spans a wide spectrum of functions, from basic domestic distribution to sophisticated cold chain, re-export operations and canal-adjacent support services.

“That range shows a country that has deliberately built logistics capacity across multiple tiers,” he explains. “Panama has genuine infrastructure serving domestic and regional needs, but that becomes invisible if you only think about the country in terms of ships passing between oceans.”

Experiencing Business and Culture’s Interplay

Culturally, the students sampled Panamanian cuisine, undertook a guided tour of Panama City and were treated to firsthand observation of Panama’s natural flora and fauna at a local rainforest resort. They also spent a day engaging with the culture and traditions of the Emberá tribe, who live on the shores of Gatun Lake, a connector for the Panama Canal. These experiences balanced the students’ supply chain studies with cultural immersion and environmental exploration, which led Cooper to reflect on how she will engage other cultures in the future.

“I will approach cross-cultural interactions with more awareness and curiosity, respecting how local systems and norms shape business decisions,” she says.

While delving into Panama’s society, Abanto noticed that cultural influences inform how business is conducted in the country: Trust and personal connection play a prominent role in Panamanian business.

“Building rapport with people is highly valued, and it can take you much further than trying to operate without those relationships,” she says.

Abanto also found that, with Panama’s economy so intertwined with global trade, the nation’s citizens often have strong international focuses, with international topics often coming up in local conversations. This international nature of Panama’s economy helped Cooper realize that nothing in global business stands alone.

“Infrastructure connects to policy, policy connects to trade, trade connects to labor, geography and relationships. Everything influences everything else,” Cooper says. “Understanding that level of interconnectivity changed how I see global operations. It made me think more holistically and strategically about how all the moving parts come together.”

Building on Lessons from the Field

The deep observations from MS-SCMG students solidified Goldsby’s confidence that the cohort is synthesizing program curriculum and experiences as they prepare for graduation in the spring.

“I’m already seeing it,” Goldsby says. “The students are talking about how the lessons are resonating as they’re taking courses in international economics, global trade compliance and global modeling and analysis. It’s clicking at a different level than had we not explored part of the world with them.”

Main image: Tom Goldsby (far right) and the MS-SMCG class pose with members of the Emberá tribe.

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CONTACT:

Scott McNutt, senior business writer/publicist, rmcnutt4@utk.edu

Contact

Scott McNutt

Business Writer/Publicist

rmcnutt4@utk.edu

Haslam College of Business - UT Haslam Graduate Supply Chain Students See Firsthand Panama’s Role in International Trade