Hello! - My name is Rosa, and I have been an employee at Walmart for the last nine years. I started as a Personal Shopper (2). In this role, I shopped on behalf of Walmart customers and got the products ready to be picked up by the customer, delivered by car, or by drone (3) in partnership with DroneUp. Today, I am in management training, getting ready to become a manager in a relatively new AI-driven store in Brownsville, Texas, built using best practices from the Intelligent Retail Lab(1) in New York. 


When I moved into this new position, I decided I needed to go to school and take advantage of the learning opportunities that Walmart and the Purdue University system provided. I have worked with Purdue researchers on some of our newest technologies at the store and learned a lot from them. I joined the Purdue family two months ago by taking a Certificate on the Internet of Things. 


My experience in the PG-Walmart campus on the Metaverse (4) has been amazing! If you have not been to it yet, you will be amazed at how engaging it is. Once you put your VR headset on, you enter a new world where you can speak with anyone, even if they don't speak your own language. You might remember in 2020, people used to exercise with VR headsets using Supernatural (9), and it felt pretty realistic when you punched different blocks that were coming directly toward you. Today, technology made this campus even more real. For example, you can shake hands on the PG-Walmart campus and feel the human connection through ultrasonic waves (10).       


The interaction with my professors is also high level. They are always right there with me through the whole experience. We usually do activities with my colleagues from work, the Purdue researchers, and the PG faculty member. The team has an artificial assistant to schedule meetings, correct our short assignments, and keep us all on the same page with the progress of our work. 


It is my understanding that the scenarios presented in my courses have been created by the PG faculty using GPT-3 (5), a technology that Walmart also uses to develop Marketing content. While my classes are housed on the PG-Walmart campus, I also participate in courses with people working for other companies. Those are some of my favorite courses since I get the opportunity to interact with people from all over the world. The scenarios presented in those courses are usually customized for us and translated into other languages if one of the students does not speak English. That experience on it is own is very important to me because it tells me that Purdue Global values inclusivity and is prepared to embrace students from all over the world (11).


Before I go, I should also share my experience with the student support at PG and Walmart. Working full-time and studying while being a single parent is not easy. I have three kids, and I am first generation student. My career with Walmart is vitally important to me, but so are my children.  This results in a constant balance between meeting their needs and my professional goals. That is why studying at the PG-Walmart campus meets my needs. Also, the employee/student well-being perks are precisely what I needed. Walmart encourages us to take one paid hour off a week, so long we spend that hour doing something recreational outside (6). I really appreciate that. It allows me to spend more time with my kids, even during working hours. Through PG, I also have access to the “She Matters App,” a digital platform to help Black and LatinX women address and resolve various health problems (7). And, of course, if my family or I need healthcare support, we have the opportunity to use the Aimedis Health City services (8), which are located just next to the PG/Walmart campus in the Metaverse.