Going back to school

I need a new lunch box. In less than two weeks, I will be starting the Integrated Marketing certificate program at the University of Chicago’s Graham School. Free courses are one of the perks of working for the university. I am very excited to start. It has been nearly five years since I last had to turn in homework.

I will be taking courses like Web Analytics, Mobile Web Marketing Strategies and Insights and Opportunities in Social Media. Here is an excerpt from what I wrote in my personal statement on my application:

When I started my degree in public relations in 2003, MySpace was launched. When I graduated in 2005, MySpace was sold for $580 million to News Corporation. Over the course of my short career, Facebook has replaced MySpace as the dominant social network, Twitter has endeared millions, and newspapers are struggling to find new business models that monetize their Internet presence.

Public relations and marketing practitioners need to be quick to adapt to this fast-changing media landscape. Only five years ago, there were no courses like Web and Mobile Web Marketing Strategies or Insights and Opportunities in Social Media. And while I have been keenly interested in these topics, and kept a detailed eye on these developments, I am excited to have a chance to explore them in an academic setting. How do traditional marketing concepts align with innovative new developments?

That is what I intend to learn. Having just started a new job that is very different from the previous position—in terms of audience, messages and objectives—I am eager to apply academic theories to my new experience. Most of all, I hope to gain new insights to enhance the research dissemination strategies in my new position.

And my hope is that fresh homework assignments will likely spur some new blog posts. I know they have been scarce over the past months. But rest assured, an absence of blog posts does certainly not mean I have been idle. Good things are brewing.

Tags: education, marketing