Arthur Hughes, a supply chain lecturer at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, is spearheading an effort to connect students with supply chain leaders in the region.

Hughes, alongside Drew Rosen and Jayanth Jayaram, both distinguished professors at UNCW’s Congdon School, is working to establish an advisory board of eight to 12 industry professionals to oversee the school’s supply chain management concentration.

“Most of our concentrations in the business school have an advisory board of some sort,” Hughes said, “and the objective of the advisory board is really to provide guidance on curriculum development, how we prepare students for the transition from academia to the workplace, and really to also start to build a cohesive relationship between the business community and academia.”

The Congdon School’s supply chain concentration previously had an advisory board, Hughes said, and they hope to rebuild it.

“We want to reinitiate it, reinvigorate it and get it started again,” Hughes said, “and that’s the objective for fall 2026 is to have this ready to go.”

The group envisions a board made up of officials from companies in the supply chain industry or retired professionals with industry experience. Hughes said they're currently working on a short list of potential board members and plans to finalize the board in the coming months.

Hughes and his colleagues are also working to establish a Supply Chain Center of Excellence, which will, in part, build on the advisory board. The proposed center will be modeled on UNCW’s Sales Center of Excellence & Customer Delight, which caters to students in the university’s marketing and professional selling programs.

The center of excellence model involves creating a formal partnership with local companies that financially invest in the university to put on engagement events that connect students with potential employers and companies with potential employees, Hughes said.

As part of the Sales Center of Excellence, for example, local companies partner with UNCW to host meet-the-partner events, networking opportunities, competitions such as mock negotiations and case studies, and other forms of experiential learning, Hughes said.

Hughes said the group sees the advisory board members as early partners in the Supply Chain Center of Excellence but expects membership to broaden and grow once it’s established. Hughes said they're targeting 2027 for the center’s launch.

Before becoming a supply chain lecturer at the university, Hughes spent more than two decades overseeing procurement and supplier operations in the automotive industry.

Over the course of his career, Hughes worked for several Tier 1 suppliers, which provided vehicle components like brakes, engine systems and drive shafts directly to major automakers such as BMW, General Motors and Ford.

“We sold parts and assemblies to the automakers,” Hughes said, “and then we had an entire supply base that we were managing to do that.”

His last role in the industry was with GKN Automotive, where he served as vice president of procurement and supplier quality. He held that role up until 2019, when he decided to leave the industry after feeling burnt out, Hughes said.
 
He moved to Carolina Beach and had brief stints in the pharmaceutical industry and executive recruiting before connecting with UNCW. Hughes approached the university about serving on an advisory board for its supply chain management program, given his industry experience, but he learned the board had dissolved years earlier.
 
Instead, he became involved with the Cameron Executive Network, which pairs local professionals with business students as mentors and advisers. Today, he serves as a co-director of the program, and last year he became a full-time lecturer at the university.

It’s his years of industry experience that, Hughes said, gives him valuable insight into helping form the advisory board and the center of excellence.

“That feedback from industry is what we really want to have, because we know that it’s certainly a dynamic situation,” he said. “We know kind of what businesses are expecting, but as things change, and things are changing at a pretty rapid pace, much more so than in the past, we need to keep up with all of that to make sure that our students are the most competitive that they can be.”

The initiatives also help give the university’s supply chain concentration more visibility in the community, Hughes said. UNCW recently added a master’s in supply chain management, the only such program in the state.

Hughes said the center of excellence will likely take a broader view of the supply chain, including operations skills relevant to all businesses and business students.

“Supply chain is not just transportation and logistics. We think of supply chain as more broader operations focused, and operations are not just manufacturing operations,” he said. “Every business is an operation.”