University introduces new marketing minor

The Center for Leadership Education (CLE) will introduce an undergraduate Marketing and Communications minor on Nov. 1.

Pam Sheff, the director of CLE’s Master of Science in Engineering Management program, said that the decision to create the new minor was based on the popularity of existing marketing and professional communications courses.

“It’s nothing earth -shaking or revolutionary. It’s a way to allow students to reflect on their transcripts, what they’re already doing,” Sheff said. “The courses are popular, students are taking them, and all we want to do is give them a way to signal to potential employers, ‘Look, I’m accomplished in this area.’ We recognize what our students need and want and try to do the best for them.”

Sheff expects the minor to be an efficient way for students to concentrate their interest in marketing and communications into a degree that has tangible value to employers. However, CLE will not necessarily be introducing new courses for students to take in order to fulfill the minor requirements.

“We restructured into two tracks: a marketing management track and an integrated marketing communications track,” Sheff said. “We have the potential to add new courses to keep up with the where the field is going and keep up with student demand. [We have] added a business analytics course to help students really understand the quantitative approaches to decision making in the field.”

Sheff said that many students had a hand in the development of the minor.

“All of our students are key players,” she said. “The CLE is a very student-centered place. Our doors are always open. All of us are here because we enjoy working with students. We know the field is growing and employment opportunities are strong, and we wanted to make sure our students had the recognition for what it is they were doing.”

Leslie Kendrick, a senior lecturer in the undergraduate Entrepreneurship and Management Program, is a former marketing manager with twelve years of experience in the field. She brought the first marketing class to Johns Hopkins over thirteen years ago and will continue to teach classes that are offered for the new minor.

“I taught in the Entrepreneurship and Management program for about seven years before being hired full-time to further develop the undergraduate marketing and marketing communications course offerings,” Kendrick wrote in an email to The News-Letter.

Kendrick will work with Marketing and Communications program director Julie Reiser to further develop the program’s offering. Reiser, who teaches a variety of classes in communications, chaired the committee that assembled the proposal for the minor.

Although the new Marketing and Communications track is a minor, not a major, students who pursue it will have the opportunity to gain field experience before graduation. Their work will be aimed towards making themselves attractive job and internship candidates, as well as giving themselves a grounding in the marketing field.

“That’s what makes our students really attractive - we are not a school that turns out narrow students,” Sheff said. “We turn out students who can adapt to professional environments, and lead. It’s a way of combining lots of ways of thinking. Hopkins students are great thinkers, and we are giving them the opportunity to think in several different capacities.”

Upperclassmen students who have completed many marketing and professional communications courses to satisfy the minor will be able to officially complete the minor with credit from those courses. Sheff said that current students who don’t have time in their schedules to fit in specific courses can obtain waivers in order to graduate with the Marketing and Communications minor.

“We’ll decide [waivers] on a case-by-case basis,” Sheff said. “Don’t think you can’t get the minor just because you might not have taken Professional Communications. Come talk to us.”

Hopkins has also supported its own chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA) since 2008. According to the AMA website, the group offers opportunities for students to learn, teach and study marketing globally.