With two faculty members retiring in the past five years and many changes to the marketing field itself, St. Bonaventure University’s marketing department has made changes to modernize the program.
Paul Barretta, Ph.D., who started teaching at Bona’s in 2013, said the department was much different before he started.
“When I was hired, the dean at the time pointed out to me that they expected a couple of retirements in the coming years and they wanted to hire someone who would take over chair in the future,” said Barretta, assistant professor of marketing and department chair. “I had ideas for changes and spoke to him about it. He said the changes would be easier to put into effect if I was the chair.”
The retirement of Durriya Khairullah, Ph.D., and Michael Russell, Ed. D. who led the marketing department to hire two recent Ph.D.’s, Dr. Nguyen Pham and Dr. William Northington, said Barretta.
LaurieAnne Wickens, a graduate assistant of the marketing department and current MBA student, said she likes how each of the professors bring something new to the table.
“The new teachers bring a fresh perspective,” said Wickens. “Each of them has a unique background as far as work and academic experience go.”
Many changes to the curriculum have also been made.
“We redesigned and are changing two courses,” said Barretta. “One is advertising. We are changing it to integrated marketing communications, which fits what we’re teaching better. The marketing capstone is traditionally called Case Applications in Marketing, but it’s been completely redesigned and it would be called Contemporary Concepts in Marketing. It’s a real workplace-ready class. Students take this course during their senior year.”
Barretta said there have also been changes for required courses for graduation.
“We added a digital Weand social media marketing course as a requirement for graduation,” said Barretta. “By doing so, we reduced the number of marketing electives from four to three. Anyone who came in as a freshman after Fall of 2015 are required to take the course and only need three electives to graduate.”
The department aims to teach students a mix of theory and application, so when they get jobs, they can learn the organizations way of applying theories they have learned at Bona’s, said Barretta.
He feels the changes made were necessary for the department to offer students the most contemporary knowledge in marketing.
“This is what people that are hiring marketing graduates are looking for,” Barretta said. “That’s the biggest reason we did it. The overall reputation of the marketing department, people have told me, is getting more positive and professional and we’re trying to reinforce that.”
Wickens agreed with Barretta.
“I think the changes are providing more opportunities to students,” said Wickens. “All of the marketing teachers are very willing and open to talking about your future, especially if you want to go into a field they have experience in. They are very student friendly.”
The marketing department is working on developing the program even further.
“We’re working on being able to offer more research related classes,” said Barretta. “We would love to offer a qualitative research methods course. We also have a marketing analytics classes we will be offering, which is a research related type class.”
Barretta feels hopeful about the direction the marketing department is going.
“The faculty is great. The students are great. We’re doing exciting things,” Barretta said. “It makes coming to work fun.”
engjg14@bonaventure.edu
