During the fall semester of 2020, I performed research on sustainable supply chains in the fashion industry under my mentor Dr. Eunjoo Cho. Dr. Cho is part of the School of Human Environmental Sciences, and I am a finance major in Walton. Our goal this semester was to conduct four or more interviews with employees or owners of fashion businesses and for me to work more on the thesis paper.

The fashion industry is the second most environmentally harmful industry, so I knew that I wanted to do research pertaining to business practices that could make fashion retailers more sustainable. Landing on a topic was a bit of a challenge, though. Originally, we had a somewhat different idea that involved interviewing fashion retailers about their business models in an effort to learn more about sustainable business models to then help other businesses implement these sustainable practices. With COVID-19 and other challenges, such as not getting enough response from businesses, we had to switch to something more realistic, which is when we adopted the idea of comparing supply chain practices of fashion retailers. Not much research has been done on the subject of green supply chain management in the industry, so the project is very timely.

This past year has taught me that research is a lot of trial and error. After we realized the business model topic was not going to pan out, we just moved on to figuring out what to do instead. I also learned that it is very hard to get into contact with businesses, whether this is due to COVID-19 or just the norm for businesses , it was quite difficult recruiting people to be interviewed.

Dr. Cho has been an integral part of every aspect of research. She helped form the specific topic to research based on what I told her I was interested in and made the transition to focusing on green supply chain management easier because we relied on many of the same studies for literature review and methodology we were going to use on the first topic. Prior to this, I have no research experience, so Dr. Cho has been massively helpful in answering my numerous questions and editing my writing to make it more suitable for a scientific study. She is also the reason we were able to recruit the interviewees, so clearly this research would not have been able to happen without her.

I did not travel for this research. Originally, we were planning to attend the International Textile and Apparel Association Conference in 2020, but COVID-19 nixed that. The subject has not been discussed any further, so I am unsure as to whether we will travel in 2021.

I hope to wrap up the project in Spring 2021. I need to analyze the interviews, complete the writing of the paper, and create my thesis poster for Walton. I plan to graduate in December 2021. After that, I am unsure of my plans, as I do not know if I want to start my career or perhaps attend graduate school.