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Looking Back at 2019

2019 was an immensely successful year for us. Our students and faculty continued to excel. Our students won several awards at national and international competitions and our placement rates remained very high. Our internationally-renowned faculty members published several papers in our top journals, and we continue to be ranked among the Top 25 Departments on University of Texas at Dallas’ research ranking. We will also be welcoming four new faculty members (Shreyans Goenka, Shilpa Madan, Broderick Turner, and Yan Xu) next Fall. We summarize some of our key achievements below.   

Undergraduate Program

Placements: Our students continue to thrive. Our overall placement rate is 93%, while our Professional Sales Minor has a 100% placement rate. Salaries continue to rise. 

Curriculum Updates: We introduced new courses, changed the structure of our programs, and expanded our Professional Sales and Digital Marketing Strategy Minors and Concentrations. We continue to innovate and 2020 will be no different; we expect to introduce new courses to train the next generation of Business leaders. 

Student Learning: We also continue to provide our students with real-world experiential learning opportunities. Students continue to work with real world business clients—whether it be as part of our classes or as part of a student organization, such as American Marketing Association (AMA), Pi Sigma Epsilon (PSE), or PRISM. Majority of our students (91%) are directly involved in an immersive applied experience (AMA, PRISM, etc). Students also continue to receive one-on-one mentoring from our successful alumni, members of our Marketing Advisory Board and the Sales Board. Professional Sales students participated in role play exercises with our Sales Board members, which simulate professional training techniques conducted at national companies. And Board members continue to visit classrooms to share and discuss industry trends and practices. The Marketing Advisory Board had a successful year mentoring over 125 marketing students, supporting two marketing department associates, providing over $2,000 in scholarships, as well as creating an inaugural Junior Marketing Advisory Board inclusive of marketing students who worked directly with the board.  In addition to all of this, the board also sponsored and paid for students to attend the National AMA Conference held in New Orleans.

International Programs: The Department offers two semester-long study abroad programs. The Spring program, which is in year 19, focuses on marketing, with an optional two-week experiential learning project in East Africa. The Fall program, which just completed year seven, is an interdisciplinary program with a focus on creating enduring social change and consistently attracts students from all VT colleges.  Students in the Fall program spend 4 weeks in East Africa engaged in an experiential learning project. Each program enrolls around 60 students.

Student Success: Our students won several national level awards, and our Professional Sales Program continues to build upon its successes with its sales competition team once again competing on a national level at the International Collegiate Sales Competition. We also provided a $2,000 scholarship to recognize student success.  

Outreach: AMA hosted Blacksburg High School's DECA  members this spring. The students who were going to the national competition each presented their prepared pitch to a small group of AMA members. PRISM participated in it’s ninth annual trip to NY, bringing twelve students who presented at firms such as Mastercard, NBA, Future Brand and other firms. In addition the organization brought on two new clients for the 2020 year, in addition to the two core clients the organization has worked with since the start of 2010, Pamplin & First & Main. In addition, PRISM executives visited marketing and advertising firms, and many of them acquired internship opportunities and full time positions.

Graduate Program

Placements: Marketing doctoral students Debjit Gupta (SUNY Binghamton) and Yegyu Han (IE Business School - Madrid) accepted positions as Assistant Professors of Marketing starting in August 2020. Both expect to defend their dissertations in 2020. Congrats Debjit and Yegyu. We are very proud of your achievements and wish you all the best.

Curriculum Updates: The Marketing department (working with BXBR) played a leading role in developing and offering the research methodology sequence in the Pamplin common methodological curriculum. Six of the nine courses are offered under the auspices of the Marketing Department. Following offerings as Special Study courses, all are going through governance procedures for incorporation into the regular Ph.D. curriculum.  The courses are:

Behavioral Track: Qualitative & Survey Methods for Business Research;  Experimental Methods for Research in Business

Quantitative Track: Advanced Quantitative Methods for Business Research; Times Series Analysis for Business Research; Bayesian Methods in Business Research; Applied Multivariate Statistics for Business Research 

Student Success: Multiple Ph.D. students had papers accepted for presentation at national conferences in 2019, including at the Association for Consumer Research Conference, Marketing Science conference, and Society for Consumer Psychology conference. Congratulations all. 

Research

Research Success: The Department continues to excel in research. We published 17 articles in Marketing’s top 4 journals between 2016-2019, which makes us a top 25 University of Texas-Dallas research department. We also published 10 articles in the Journal of Consumer Research (JCR), the flagship journal for behavioral research, during 2016-2019, which places us among the Top 3 departments in University of Texas-Dallas research ranking for publications in JCR. Our faculty continue to serve on the Editorial Review Boards and as Associate Editors of several of our premier journals. One of our faculty members co-chaired one of the field’s premier conferences in 2019 (Association of Consumer Research’s 50th conference). 

Personnel

New Faculty: We had a blockbuster recruiting year. Four new faculty will be joining next year. Welcome Shreyans Goenka, Shilpa Madan, Broderick Turner, and Yan Xu. We are thrilled you will be joining our family.

Boards: Our boards continue to thrive. We have nine continuing members on our Sales Board, and eleven continuing members in the Marketing Advisory Board, as well as 5 new members. Welcome Marvin Aylor of Nascar, Anne Love of American Express, Lauren Prociv of the Martin Agency, Miranda Valentino of Ingersoll Rand and Zach Williams of Venveo Digital Marketing.