Patrick McCuistion (business and economic analytics, ‘20) of Battle Ground, Washington, chose Boise State because of the well-balanced, high-caliber business college and affordable tuition.
“I looked at 11 different colleges in California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho to find the best business program,” McCuistion said. “I landed firmly on Boise State. I believe that Boise State has the best-rounded business program out of the colleges I toured and after finishing my program, I know that I definitely made the right choice.”
McCuistion began his college career as a business economics major, but later discovered that a business and economic analytics degree would combine the core principles of computer science, mathematics, business economics and business intelligence. The idea of being cross trained in technical knowledge and business theory to better relate to colleagues in technical and administrative roles appealed to him. He was named the 2018 College of Business and Economics Signature Student for the Department of Information Technology and Supply Chain Management in fall 2018, and graduated summa cum laude in 2020.
Clearwater Analytics in Boise hired him as a quality assurance analyst – a job he secured in October 2019 with a May 2020 start date. He worked on the security master team automating testing tools, doubling the speed of code deployments and simplifying their general testing architecture. The quality assurance department was dissolved last fall, so McCuistion and his team automated his duties. He then became a data and reporting analyst for Amazon at the Amazon Robotics Fulfillment Center in Nampa.
“I am using the skills from my business and economic analytics major, my applied mathematics minor, and my computer science minor every day,” he said.
At Amazon, he conducts research on a core sample of their inventory each week, tracking down defects in the system and reporting those issues to senior operations managers. McCuistion automates the daily workflow and builds tools that pull data from sites across the Amazon network, which is then presented in clear, meaningful dashboards to help answer problems that require data mining and automated data collection to aggregate the information effectively. The tools that he builds help simplify the jobs of the more than 100 managers that work in the fulfillment center.
McCuistion employs the skills and knowledge he gained at Boise State to eliminate the many frustrations and issues that arise for his co-workers. Compiling information in a pleasing, easy-to-understand format for Amazon managers is an additional skill that he acquired in the College of Business and Economics.
“Because of what I learned at Boise State, I know how to design tools that remove those frustrations and barriers and help the managers see the data clearly so they can make data-driven decisions,” he said. “Like in Dr. Christie Fuller’s predictive analytics class, we learned how to work with stakeholders to finish data mining and report projects in a timely manner, and present data that was useful and actionable.”
When not simplifying processes and boosting efficiencies for Amazon, McCuistion is a member of Boise-based band The Governors, which features five Boise State students and alumni. The group is currently working on its second album with live dates scheduled in the summer.