University of Idaho students will soon have the opportunity to make themselves more marketable, thanks to the addition of a new minor in marketing program that will be available beginning in the summer 2014 session. The effort to provide a minor in marketing at UI was undertaken by Steve Shook, UI marketing professor, and the Department of Business in the College of Business and Economics after recognizing the potential for the degree.
“We’ve had a lot of students ask about minors in marketing, and we knew we wanted to provide that,” Shook said. “It usually takes about one year to create a new program, but creating this program took two years.”
Shook, the faculty of the Department of Business and the College of Business and Economics submitted a notice of intent to the Idaho State Board of Education that detailed the proposed program with the hope of providing UI students with a formal minor.
“The biggest thing we hope to accomplish with this program is to provide students with a differentiating feature to their degree that makes them more marketable,” Shook said. “Students in programs like clothing, textiles and design will especially benefit from this option, because marketing will be a large part of what they do in their careers.”
The faculty of the Department of Business was mindful of how to incorporate marketing with a variety of majors. The marketing minor will use existing courses and resources, but will not be attached to a specific existing program. According to the program proposal, the marketing minor will differ from other Idaho institutions in that it is an interdisciplinary curriculum that “consists of several marketing-oriented courses that are offered outside the College of Business and Economics.” Mike McCollough, UI Associate Professor of Marketing, said the faculty worked together to produce the program.
“Steve (Shook) spearheaded the paperwork and program, but it was a collaborative process,” McCollough said. “We spent time as a faculty deciding what courses made sense to include in the marketing minor requirements and the best way to structure the program.”
The undergraduate programs in the College of Business and Economics are accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, an accreditation earned by less than 5 percent of the world’s business programs. This ongoing evaluation of degree programs ensures the marketing minor will uphold a high level of quality, as well as help students achieve the expected learning outcomes for all College of Business and Economics academic programs and those specific to the discipline of marketing.
“Most students are in business and just don’t know it,” McCollough said. “We envisioned students in a degree program that is different than marketing or business having a chance — through a formal minor — to develop technical expertise and needed marketing skills that will make them competitive in the workforce.”
Marketing focuses on processes that stimulate growth and provide quality and information to consumers. The proposal from the College of Business and Economics stated that the marketing minor was created to “provide an academic program area that can be used to complement existing degrees offered at the institution.”
“Marketing courses educate students not only in business and marketing skills, but inform them as a consumer as well,” McCollough said. “This program is an effort to do a better job serving students and contributing to their success in the future.”
Cara Pantone can be reached at [email protected].