SILVER CITY, NM—Copper mining has always been part of life for WNMU senior Hailey Cisneros: her father works for Freeport-McMoRan in its Chino operation, and her favorite activity as a child was visiting the open pit overlook off State Road 152. Cisneros, who is majoring in Accounting and Marketing and minoring in Entrepreneurship and Public Administration, has enjoyed the opportunity to see the industry from the inside this summer as she completes an accounting internship with Freeport-McMoRan in Morenci, Arizona.

A native of Silver City, Cisneros started studying at WNMU as a dual-enrollment student while still in Silver High School. She knew when she started at WNMU that she wanted to study marketing, but her interest in accounting grew during her first year at the university. “I took an accounting principles class with [Former WNMU Assistant Professor Remington] Curtis, and he was such an amazing professor. … He reached out to me at the end of the semester and told me I would make a good accounting major.”

Now, in her internship, she is able to apply what she has learned at WNMU to her work for Freeport-McMoRan. “It is so much fun,” she said of her internship. “We have so many different accountants. We have our cost analysis team, which I am a part of, and we also have our capital accountants, which manage our assets. … We also have a general ledger team and Morenci Water and Electric. The mine owns the entire Morenci town site, so all the businesses that are in town are owned by the mine. All the bills for utilities and rent run through our office as well.”

Working with Freeport-McMoRan is far from Cisneros’ first look into the world of business. Even though she entered the university directly from high school, she nonetheless has a solid business background behind her. Starting at the age of 15, Cisneros started working in several different capacities at a local automobile dealership, and she has also interned at the Silver City Food Co-op and worked for the WNMU Division of Compliance and Communications.

While these experiences have given Cisneros a broad background in different operations, her internship has allowed her to focus deeply on a specific project. “For my project, I was assigned to look into one of our contractors, Empire Cat,” she explained. “They do a lot of the maintenance on our heavy equipment and some of our light-duty trucks. They also have welders for us and provide rentals if we need them.”

“I am going to put together a flow chart of the company and their operations and map out different processes,” Cisneros continued. “Anyone at Freeport can see if there is an issue in one process or one area. They can pinpoint ‘this is who to talk to’ or ‘this is where we need to go.’ I think that is really important for accounting because we do not know what all [Empire Cat does]. All we are seeing are the invoices, or the costs hit our general ledger. We can see the description, but we do not see all that it took to get there.”

Cisneros said that while the internship is deepening her appreciation of accounting, she is also enjoying learning about her coworkers, especially her fellow interns, some of whom are also her roommates. “Freeport provided intern housing, and there are seven of us in the house,” she explained. “My roommates are amazing. I get along with all of them.”

Cisneros said that she had initially been nervous about moving to the small town of Morenci for the entire summer, but her roommates have helped her make the transition. “It would have been so hard if I didn’t have that support system.”

The interns are all studying different fields, said Cisneros, including human resources, geology, health and safety, environmental engineering, civil engineering and mine engineering. “There is a wide scope,” she said. “We are all at different points in our education. Some are undergrads, some are master’s, and we come from everywhere. … In our house, there are four different languages. We all speak English, but one speaks Spanish, another comes from Kenya and speaks a language from there, and another is from Bangladesh and speaks a language from there.”

In addition to learning about her fellow interns, Cisneros has also been inspired by the success of the WNMU alumni that are currently working in leadership positions for Freeport-McMoRan, including the comptroller at Morenci and the general manager for administration. “It is so inspiring,” she said. “I just want to pick their brains and learn their stories and how they got to where they are.”