“Marketing Rules” when it comes to student S-L projects

Fresno, CA - While other schools on the Fresno State, campus have their own Service-Learning programs focusing on their own academic specialties and major options, virtually all of the undergraduate students participating in Service-Learning at the Craig School of Business do so while enrolled in the Marketing and Logistics Department’s Mktg. 100S. This is a required “marketing principles” course for all business students, which places strong emphasis on the Service-Learning component, making up 25% of the course curriculum.

As such, students are required to engage in marketing-related projects to assist the Community-Based Organization (CBO) partners with which they have chosen to work. Because marketing involves such a large variety of sub-disciplines, it is a rare CBO that cannot use a marketing approach to deal with the myriad of opportunities it typically faces in serving and meeting the needs of its constituents.
In addition to providing solutions to opportunities for its CBO partners, students are able to engage in the process of “experiential learning,” whereby they are able to apply what they are learning in a real-world situation. This approach is arguably one of the most effective methods of reinforcing what students learn in the classroom; and doing so in a manner that majority students find both challenging and rewarding.

While many mistakenly believe that “Marketing” is either just sales or just advertising, there are numerous facets of marketing that can and should be brought into play when resolving business issues. They include, but are not restricted to, such activities as defining (or redefining) an organization’s mission or vision statement; designing research that more precisely identifies the target market; creating a database to more easily reach a CBO’s constituents (typically volunteers, financial contributors, and those the CBO is reaching out to help); or developing fund-raising programs or publicity campaigns. Each of these services performed by Service-Learning students under the direction of the CBO can make a real contribution to the success of that organization.

It is no wonder that most students are convinced that “marketing rules” when it comes to the Craig School of Business Service-Learning Program.