Hands-On Experience

The Strategic Marketing and Services Leadership specialization focuses on providing students with opportunities to work with corporate partners in the conduct of applied projects.  These projects encourage Strategic Marketing and Services Leadership students to apply and integrate the skills they have learned in the classroom to real world problems.  Besides providing important learning opportunities, applied projects help students build their resumes and build links with the executives sponsoring their project. Strategic Marketing students often cite these projects as extremely valuable learning experiences.  Their corporate sponsors, in turn, are often emphatic in praising the success of their student consultants in providing managerially actionable insights and solutions.

Two courses -- Strategic Projects and Projects in Customer Relationship Measurement and Management -- provide students with the opportunity to work with corporate partners in the conduct of significant projects.  The first course, Projects in Customer Relationship Measurement and Management, is usually offered in the fall of the student’s second year, and provides instruction in the research skills often used in the Strategic Projects course, which usually starts in the spring of the second year.  The Strategic Projects course is a capstone experience that places the students in the role of consultants working on projects of substantial scope. The focus is on integrative application of skills already learned rather than the learning of new principles and tools.

Corporate sponsors of Strategic Marketing and Services Leadership applied projects have included the following firms:

• IBM
• Harley-Davidson
• Avnet
• Petsmart
• Siemens
• General Electric
• UPS
• Mettler-Toledo
• Yellow Corporation
• Brand Outlook
• MGM Grand
• Chase Bank
• Phoenix Suns
• Mayo Clinic