Student and Faculty Engagement
Business Students Go From Text Book to Professional Presenters
Students in Dr. Bob Anservitz’s marketing class get to apply their skills and stand-in as professional market researchers. In a semester-long assignment, students are assigned an in-depth market research project. The practical application pushes students to utilize the principles learned in the classroom to gather, compile and present actual data and findings.
For example, students in a recent class conducted marketing research on the GGC website. They were divided into three marketing task forces: 1) Internal Target Audience Perception and Performance Task Force, 2) External Target Audience Web Analysis and Improvement Task Force, and 3) Enhanced Website Analysis Task Force.
The students used focus groups, interviews and surveys to conduct much of the research. They broke down demographical data on their target audiences, wrote their own surveys and focus group questions, found feasible opportunities to question and survey their target audience and used gap analysis to define their audiences and findings. Once the research was compiled and quantified, each task force wrote a summary and recommendations based on their findings.
To conclude the assignment, each group gave a professional presentation to GGC staff to share the results of their research and fielded questions from the audience. The staff was impressed with the quality of work in all aspects and implemented many of the suggestions from the students' recommendations.
Marketing Students Deliver Tools for MedShare International
Business students not only are learning innovative new skill sets in class; they are applying those abilities in real-life work situations outside of class. In fact, GGC students delivered an impressive line-up of marketing tools for one of the world’s highest-rated U.S. charities, MedShare International, a portfolio that normally would have cost the client some $200,000.
Dr. Anservitz helped arrange the partnership between GGC business students and MedShare, the worldwide not-for-profit organization that obtains, sorts, packages and redistributes medical supplies that are plentiful in the U.S., but in high demand in other countries. By making use of medical surplus, MedShare has kept more than 980,000 cubic feet of medical supplies from ending up in U.S. landfills.
Nineteen students in GGC’s Marketing Promotions class were divided into four task force groups. One of those teams created, wrote and designed three new brochures for MedShare: a general information piece, one on volunteer recruitment and another on barrel collections for surplus medical supplies. One student task force created new signage for MedShare’s headquarters in Decatur, and another reworked and redesigned the MedShare website, even translating it into French and Spanish. Another group created a 13-minute “walk and talk” PowerPoint presentation that MedShare can share with potential donors and volunteers.
Doing all that work for MedShare was only part of the class. Students also attended lectures, took exams and presented their marketing resources to the top brass at MedShare. The founder of MedShare, A.B. Short, attended the presentation and was thrilled with the work of the GGC students.
