Studying in Europe is not just for students; faculty and entire learning experience are enhanced abroad

Business student Bogdana Subachev Sichko and Lecturer Peggy Stahl pause among pink hydrangeas at the Mirabell Palace in Salzburg, Austria.

Students studying in the heart of Alpine Europe while exploring countries and capitals with classmates are usually the focus of praise for the Summer Innsbruck Program.
Which is as it should be. The School of Business Administration created the program in 1997 for students to gain a more global perspective, not only of business, but culture and history, too.
However, there’s a little publicized secret about the Summer Innsbruck Program – it’s not just for students. It’s also an outstanding experience for faculty on many levels, from economic insight and teaching perspectives to a stronger learning relationship with students.
In short, it helps make better teachers.
But there’s another incomparable aspect to the teaching job. “I get to do it in Europe and travel the Continent in my spare time,” says Dr. Chris Tobler, who teaches a statistics course.

Dr. Jim Mallett, shown here wearing a red cap and surrounded by students during a mountain hike near Innsbruck, is director of the Summer Innsbruck Program.

It’s undeniable that one attraction is getting to spend a working summer in the cool Alpine climate where air conditioning isn’t needed and jackets are sometimes needed, says Dr. Jim Mallett, program director and finance professor. But he knows the experience also improves faculty, too.
Other professors say the same thing.
“We believe that any time you can have a unique teaching experience, it makes you a better professor,” said Dr. John Tichenor, speaking for himself and his wife, Mercedes, who co-teach a leadership course in the program. “The Innsbruck program allows us to fully concentrate on our course and the students without being distracted by the ‘busyness’ of the regular school year.”
“I have much more time in Innsbruck to focus on learning and teaching,” said Tom Smith, “because the routine distractions of everyday life have been put on hold.” Smith is a retired business executive who has taught in DeLand and is a regular visiting faculty member in Innsbruck.

Innsbruck Program faculty member Tom Smith and his wife, Ann, stand in a sidewalk café in Vipiteno, Italy with business students Mike Dandurand, right, and Matt Brown, left. They attended a concert at the Orfeo Music Festival.

Other faculty members agree. Being able to focus without distraction can result in a more satisfying teaching experience.
Peggy Stahl, a marketing lecturer, sees another advantage, one that makes her a better teacher.
“Teaching is 24/7 in this rich environment,” she said, and because she “travels, eats and hangs out” with students outside class, she gains better understanding of their perspectives and insights into her courses which builds stronger learning relationships. “With fewer classes and fewer students, I can dedicate lots of one-on-one time with them sightseeing, taking in the mountain air, talking about their lives and dreams or just having fun.”
Her personal travel experiences during the summer help make her a more effective teacher in Stetson classrooms the rest of the year: “I can speak to those travel experiences when discussing global issues in management and strategy.”
“Faculty get the opportunity to talk to students at cafes and on organized trips and hikes,” said Mallett, and those discussions often center on studies. Discussions also encompass daily European experiences, which often bear on classroom lessons.

One benefit of teaching in the Innsbruck Program is living in historic and picturesque surroundings that invite strollers like Drs. John and Mercedes Tichenor shown here walking along a street in Innsbruck’s Old Town behind their daughter, Emily.

“It is easier to talk to the students about foreign currency when they are spending that currency daily,” said Mallett. “Students relate more easily to Italian debt problems and financial markets when they have recently traveled to that country.”
On one level, management and marketing lessons are easier to teach in Innsbruck, said Stahl. Students’ awareness is heightened in the new environment; “all their synapses are fired up and the learning mode is turned on.
“The context of global marketing theories and concepts have more meaning to them because they observe different practices, ads and business norms in their travels,” she said. “It’s the best of experiential education.”
The Innsbruck learning experience is “very holistic,” said Dr. Mercedes Tichenor, and professors use it to their advantage. Instruction and assignments are just as rigorous as those at Stetson, she said, but learning is intensified outside class with experiences of language, culture, customs, public transportation, food and social relations all of which are often used in class discussions.
Faculty members work hard partly because the week is compressed with a lot of material to cover in a short time. Classes meet only four days a week for six weeks. But, as Tobler says, the hard work is worthwhile when there’s a long weekend ahead for travel to Venice, Paris or Prague.
Given technologies available in and out of the classrooms at the University of Innsbruck, it’s not a lot different from teaching in Lynn Business Center classrooms, faculty members say.
But there are minor challenges.

The dramatic Alpine landscape outside classroom windows is a distinctive part of teaching in the Summer Innsbruck Program, says Dr. Chris Tobler, shown here during class with students Ady Goss, Rachel Isaacson, Bogdana Subachev Sinchko and Ryan Carter.

Computers have instructions in German and keyboards have slight variations to account for German symbols “which can make typing interesting,” said Mercedes Tichenor. Stahl said she misses the “incredibly valuable” staff support in the Lynn Business Center.
There is another pleasantly distracting challenge.
“The hardest challenge of teaching here,” said Tobler, a first-year Innsbruck faculty member, “is keeping focused as I glance out the 11^th floor window at the spectacular view of the town, the river cutting through it and the Alps surrounding it.”
Mallet says that’s one challenge all Innsbruck faculty find overwhelming at times and never fully become accustomed to it.

For Success: 'Embrace deversity'

Yvonne Chang’s Disney corporate executive portrait shows a familiar shadow over her shoulder.

Cultural diversity has defined a distinctive philosophy for the success of Yvonne Chang, a woman who traces her roots to Cuba and her greatest inspiration no further than her Caribbean/Chinese parents.
“All that I am and will ever be, I owe to my parents,” said Chang, MBA ’09, director of Operations Integration for Disney Vacation Development Inc.
Their values led her to believe in true love, following her dreams against all odds and giving 150 percent to achieve her goals, she said. Add loyalty, faith and deep love of family to the powerful mix and the sum is an extraordinary business and community figure who advises the School of Business and is helping select its next dean.
Chang’s formula for her success is simple: Embrace diversity.
“Diversity isn’t optional if you want to be successful. It’s essential,” Chang says of her philosophy. A basic life lesson she has learned is that humans tend to view the world through the infinite perspectives of their personal experiences.
“A successful person simply cannot let bias get in the way,” she said. “If we do not push ourselves to be open and accepting, we will sadly miss many opportunities in this world. My personal and professional successes have come from my willingness to be open to all possibilities.”
The philosophy springs from Chang’s own experience growing up in a home where three cultures were “equally celebrated” – Hispanic, Chinese and American. Her Cantonese father, SuTai Chang, met her mother, Rosa, in Havana where they married and started a family. But after losing their business to the Communist revolution, they fled the oppressive environment to seek a better life for their children in America.
That flight’s aftermath forged the shy child’s character and her values as she grew up in Washington,D.C., to become more and more aware of the deep sacrifice and purpose of her parents’ lives.
“They left Cuba and came to the United States with essentially no resources and very limited English fluency with the hope and dream of creating a better future for their children,” Chang said. “When I think of their unimaginable sacrifices, and the extraordinary challenges they overcame when they first arrived, working nearly seven days a week, it makes my heart swell.”
Without significant material wealth, her parents focused on a legacy that could not be lost, a key to a bright future – a good education, high integrity, strong work ethic, commitment to excellence and community. As eldest child, Chang shouldered uncommon family duties, helping handle family business, translating for her parents, helping care for younger siblings and feeling a “tremendous sense of responsibility” to be a strong role model who embodied the values of her parents.
From a very early age, she said, she began to understand that her parents’ sacrifice and hard work was all so their children could have a better life with greater opportunities.
“I became obsessed with supporting them in this goal,” she said. “It drove me and defined me.”
She was determined to give her parents the best possible “return on their investment” and to leverage to the fullest her education and opportunities. In recent years, her parents lived a few minutes away from Chang and her husband, Bill Wahl, but her mother passed away in 2011.
“I try my best to honor her each and every day by being the best human being I can possibly be,” said Chang. “Everything my parents did, and everything they stood for, has led me to this very moment in my life.”

Yvonne Chang after her induction into the Beta Gamma Sigma honor society, with her husband, Bill Wahl, left, and the parents who inspired her to success, Rosa and SuTai Chang.

From missiles to magic: Chang’s career

Yvonne Chang’s engineering degree from George Mason University helped her land a job with a Department of Defense engineering contractor in 1986, which included work on missile guidance systems. She went on to hold a variety of posts, from research and development to public relations, during 11 years at AT&T/Lucent Technologies.
In 1998, she took a job at Disney, a move that led to a number of roles in Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, including Communications and in the Multi-market Business Development division. She directed critical initiatives involving multicultural and multilingual products and services, strategic partnerships with women and minority business and civic organizations, diversity and inclusion strategies for workforce, workplace, products and services and corporate citizenship.
Chang now serves as the director of operations integration for Disney Vacation Club, which offers timeshare experiences to nearly 500,000 individual members in 50 states and nearly 100 countries. She leads a variety of operations and business areas to support the organization’s global growth.
“One of my personal passions is community involvement,” said Chang, who has in the last decade helped lead many Metro Orlando organizations, including the National Entrepreneur Center, the Hispanic Chamber, the International Affairs Commission, Orlando Magic Youth Foundation, African American Chamber, Hispanic Business Initiatives Fund, Leadership Orlando and Women Unlimited.
Chang is a member of the School of Business Board of Advisors and the Business Dean Search Committee.

High standards keep B School among world's elite

Fundamental issues of self-examination for the Business School are coalescing this fall as a five-year endeavor enters the home stretch for reaccreditation by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International.
The issues are crucial and elemental. What should students be? Know? Be able to do? And, critically, how the School of Business Administration - and the world -- can be assured of these achievements.
"Accreditation by the AACSB says we are among the elite business schools in the world," said Dr. Jud Stryker, chairman of the Maintenance of Accreditation Committee. "It is vital for the reputation of our business school that we maintain this level of excellence."
The AACSB first accredited the Stetson's Business School in 1996, so this is the third review to maintain the accreditation. Assessment, analysis and endeavor involving every aspect of the school and faculty member have been going on since the last reaccreditation in 2005.
Final reports are being collected and assimilated by the Accreditation Maintenance Committee in anticipation of an AACSB Peer Review Team visit in late January. Stryker said he couldn't hazard a guess at the great number of faculty and staff hours that have gone into the long process.
"So many people have been part of the process," he said. "Every faculty member has played an important role, but the effort grows in intensity as the team visit approaches and we must show that we have done what we said we would do."
The AACSB doesn't make specific requirements and say "you absolutely must do this or that," said Stryker, also associate dean of the Business School and chair of the Accounting Department. Instead, it lays out guidelines and the school itself establishes the parameters of unceasing improvements in research, scholarship, assurance of learning, sufficiency of qualified faculty, strategic planning, commitment of the university to the improvements and many, many other factors encompassing the entire school.
"Continuous improvement" of the business and accounting programs is stressed by the AACSB, said Stryker. Quality of all facets of the school must be constantly monitored, improved and maintained. The AACSB's visit is the culmination of the previous five years' efforts.
Less than 5 percent of the world's business schools have achieved the elite distinction of AACSB accreditation. Stetson holds two separate AACSB accreditations, one for the entire Business School and a second, specialized accreditation for its Accounting Program. Almost 600 business schools in the world hold the former, but only 173 hold both.
"And if you look at private schools who hold both accreditations," said Stryker, "it would be in the area of 35 schools worldwide."
Although hundreds of details covering every aspect of the school are involved in honing an educational edge to meet the world's most discerning standards, the entire effort is focused on one straightforward goal: unsurpassed quality of student learning.
A reaccreditation presentation earlier this year to the Business School Board of Advisors asked several questions that reflect the crux of the effort: "What do we want our students to BE when they graduate from Stetson? What should they KNOW? What should they be able to DO? How can we be assured that they have learned what we want them to learn? How can we improve learning outcomes?"
The questions go to the core of the school's vision and mission, evident in every classroom and inherent in the solid, unquestionable reputation of every student's diploma. Stryker has no uncertainty that the questions' intrinsic standards have been exceeded in every way: "I have no doubt we will be reaccredited."
Other faculty members serving on the Accreditation Maintenance Committee are Mike Bitter, Carolyn Nicholson, Ted Surynt, Michelle DeMoss, Yingtao (Michael) Shen, Scott Jones and Stuart Michelson, dean of the Business School.  

Stetson Piano Scholars Festival

Stetson University’s School of Music presents a weekend of piano performances by faculty and scholars, Friday, Feb. 24 through Sunday Feb. 26, with a special guest performance by recording artist Mirian Conti on Friday, Feb. 24. All concert performances are open to the public and will be in Lee Chapel inside Elizabeth Hall, located at 421 N. Woodland Blvd., DeLand. The concert schedule for the weekend is as follows:

• Friday, Feb. 24 – Guest Recital featuring Mirian Conti, 7:30 p.m.
• Saturday, Feb. 25 – Scholars’ Recital, 7:30 p.m.
• Sunday, Feb. 26 – Faculty Recital featuring Edit Palmer and Michael Rickman, 3 p.m.

Guest pianist Mirian Conti, an Argentine-American and a prolific recording artist has garnered rave reviews for her recent CD release of the Complete Chopin Mazurkas on the newly created Steinway label. Her 17 recordings cover an array of styles, composers and labels. In addition to standard classical works, her repertoire is impressively wide and varied including music from Spain, Latin America and North America. She is actively involved in the music education of young pianists. For many years she has been creating and directing competition, festivals and marathons in the U.S. and South America, and has awarded scholarships and prizes to further the musical education of these young musicians.
Dr. Edit Palmer, a native ofHungary, where she graduated from the Franz Liszt Conservatory of Music with highest honors, has been a lecturer of Music in Stetson’s School of Music since 1997. During her early studies, she had won numerous piano competitions including the First Hungarian National Piano Competition in 1980. After immigrating to the United States, she earned her B.A. in piano performance at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. While an undergraduate and a student of Dr. Phillip Clarke, she held numerous solo recitals, played in various ensembles, and won many awards culminating in the Tenth Annual Bartok-Kabalevsky International Piano Competition in Redford,Virginia.
Dr. Michael Rickman, Steinway Artist, joined the School of Music faculty at Stetson University in 1983. In 1990, he was the first recipient of Stetson University’s Homer and Dolly Hand Award for Creative Activity and Research. In 1995, he received the highest honor given by Stetson University, the William Hugh McEniry Award for Excellence in Teaching. He received grants from Stetson University allowing him to study the late works of Beethoven and Schubert with the pianist Edward Kilenyi, and the works of Twentieth Century Dutch composers with Dutch pianist-composer Piet Stalmeier. Rickman has traveled and taught world-wide and gained several critically acclaimed reviews for his style and technique. Michael Rickmanhas two compact discs available on the Lakeside Records label, Romantic Realms, with works of Schubert and Brahms, and Romantic Realms II, with works of Robert Schumann. His performances can also be heard regularly on Florida Public Radio.
Admission to each concert is $10 general public, $8 senior citizens and $5 area students. For more information call the concert line (386) 822-8974, the School of Music (822) 8950 or visit www.stetson.edu/music.

Schwarz is new Dean of Business School



Thomas Schwarz

Stetson University has selected Dr. Thomas V. Schwarz, professor and the Rick Muth Family Endowed Chair in Family Business at California State University Fullerton, as the new dean of Stetson’s School of Business Administration, effective this summer.

Schwarz has extensive professional experience in both higher education and business. He has held an endowed professorship in Family Business at Cal State Fullerton’s Mihaylo College of Business Administration since 2009. Before that he was director for nine years of the Family Owned Business Institute (FOBI) and the Center for Entrepreneurship at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Mich. Since 2002, he has also served as a visiting professor of entrepreneurship at the Athens University of Economics and Business, Decision Sciences Graduate Program, in Athens, Greece.

“Dr. Schwarz will focus on advancing excellence and defining distinction in our business programs,” said Dr. Elizabeth “Beth” Paul, Stetson provost and vice president for academic affairs. ”Tom brings national and international knowledge, experience, and reputation, as well as strong strategic leadership skills and compelling vision for 21st century business education. We are thrilled to have him join our dynamic learning community.”

Schwarz earned a Doctorate of Business Administration in finance from Florida State University and also attended FSU for his MBA and undergraduate degrees. He completed post-doctoral studies in international business at the University of South Carolina and in family business advising at the Family Firm Institute.

“I couldn’t be more excited to join such a prestigious institution both for its outstanding history and its bright future,” Schwarz said. “Stetson lies at the center of growth and opportunity, and along with its staunch alumni, students, staff and faculty, its future is very bright indeed. It’s clear that these people care, and their desire is for excellence.”

Prior to joining Grand Valley in 2000, Schwarz worked in senior management and as treasurer for a family-owned manufacturing business and as an entrepreneur/owner of several other family firms. He taught finance at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and also held positions with the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and in the futures industry in Chicago.

Schwarz is recognized nationally and internationally as a leader in the fields of family business and entrepreneurship. His excellence and regard in the field resulted in the prestigious award of Fellow Status from the Family Firm Institute in 2010. He previously served on the Body of Knowledge Committee of the Family Firm Institute and was the Research Program Co-Director for the Boston 2004 and the Chicago 2005 conferences. He is also a founding co-editor of the organization’s publication, the Family Firm Practitioner. He has been a member of the Strategic Planning Committee for the Family Firm Institute since 2009. He has served with the Family Enterprise Research Conference (FERC) since 2007 and was 2011 Conference co-host. Schwarz also received the Teaching Excellence Award 2003, 2004, 2006 from Athens University of Economics and Business; and an Honorable Mention Award from the 2007 Family Enterprise Research Conference.

His research interests include international family business, entrepreneurship and finance.His publications have appeared in the Journal of Finance, Family Business Review, International Journal of Emerging Markets, Journal of Banking and Finance, The International Small Business Journal, Journal of Asian Business, as well as others. He is co-editor of the recent release of an 11-volume set titled, “Culturally-Sensitive Models of Family Business: A Compendium using the GLOBE Paradigm.”

Schwarz will succeed Dr.Stuart Michelson, who plans to return to the Stetson classroom in his position as the George and Sarah Roland Professor of Finance.

'Internationalizing' perspectives on career, life

King Ludwig’s castle in Bavaria provides a dramatic landscape background for graduate students. Jason Sauter is in the back. In front are Rebecca Sluss, Kim Hamill, Georgette Maciejewski, Kayla Richmond and Michael Scanio.

Awesome Alpine landscapes overwhelm MBA students studying in the mountainous countries around Innsbruck, Austria, but more subtle landscapes strike students just as deeply when they begin to notice lifestyles and business practices.
“Each country we visited in Europe had its own unique sense of pride,” said Rebecca Sluss of Celebration, a pride evident in business practices. Salzburg’s Stiegl brewery, for instance, used only Austrian raw materials to make its authentic Austrian beer.

Excited MBA students Jason Sauter, Mike Scanio, Kayla Richmond, Kim Hamill and Reggie Lambert pause below a waterfall at the end of a radical canyon descent in an Alpine river.

“Europeans are proud,” said Kayla Richmond of Fort Myers. “They appreciate their heritage and want to keep businesses in their country.” Austrians who live only five minutes from the border won’t go to another country to buy goods even if it saves them money. “They want their money to stay in Austria.”
European lifestyles struck other students as distinctly different from what they knew.
“My perception was Europeans have more of a meaningful social life,” said Reggie Lambert of Winter Garden. “They make time to enjoy life and appear to have more balance. In the U.S. there is this tendency to stay ahead and the definition of ‘stay ahead’ is to work…work while missing out on life.”
“From the moment we enter kindergarten, Americans are competing in some form or fashion,” said Matt Reynolds of Fort Myers. “I believe we sacrifice too much for the bottom line. In Europe the bottom line is a concern, but it appears that work-life-balance, family and happiness in general takes precedence.”

Dr. Becky Oliphant

Different cultural and business landscapes are important lessons of the MBA Summer International Program, said Dr. Becky Oliphant, program director. It not only internationalizes students’ perspectives, but they gain understanding of themselves and their career plans, and return better prepared as world-class business professionals.
“The heightened awareness and understanding doesn’t happen just in European studies,” she said. “It happens in all study abroad (programs). Being immersed in a new culture puts students’ brains in hyper mode to absorb and learn in all dimensions and with all senses.”
Since the program began in 2006, Oliphant has led some 175 students to Italy, Germany, Austria, China and Japan, and she is planning trips to Australia, New Zealand and Korea.

Students watch Riedel wine glasses being made from a catwalk above the production floor in Kufstein, Austria.

The July 11-Aug. 5 international program included more than classroom business studies. Students visited a silver mine, an Italian winery, the Munich BMW plant, Stiegl Brewery, Grassmayer Bell Foundry and operations of Riedel Glass and Swarovski Crystal. They also toured castles, cities, the Dachau Memorial Camp, paraglided and rock-climbed down a canyon stream.
Seeing European manufacturing and production facilities gave students a deeper appreciation of European craftsmanship and quality.
“Most businesses refuse to sacrifice quality for quantity,” said Richmond, a trait she particularly noticed at the Stiegl Brewery. “Its priorities do not include selling to countries like the U.S. because, in the exportation, selling and purchasing of the beer, the story of Stiegl would be lost.”
Companies want customers to appreciate their product, she said.
“It’s all about the experience and enjoying things in life, instead of an impersonal experience when you purchase things in countries like the U.S. or China,” she said. “Americans are more willing to pay for the cheaper good or service instead of one that costs a little more, but is of better quality.

Charles Reynolds joined other MBA students to paraglide over an Austrian valley.

“In Europe, it is not about finding the cheapest route.”
Enjoying things in life includes enjoying work, said Reynolds. “It seemed that most of the workers we visited with loved what they did and really enjoyed being at work,” he said. “Wolfgang, our winery guide, had a passion for wine, and you could tell he loved sharing his experiences with us. Another guy told me he has the best job in the world.”
The summer experience may change his life, said Reynolds.
“The basic lesson I learned is that it is important to take the time to slow down and enjoy life,” he said. “It made me realize that I’m spending too much of my time worrying about tomorrow, building my resume, keeping an eye on my checks-and-balances rather than enjoying today.”

Nick Fantini and other MBA students during a bike tour through Munich.

Another student, Nick Fantini of Windemere, said he gained a career advantage. “I truly feel this experience will give me a unique advantage in the workplace,” said the 14-year Disney employee. “I’ll have experience and an emotional perspective that few peers or leaders possess. I plan to leverage this perspective to grow my career and better create a memorable experience for our international clients and guests.”
For more information on international MBA study opportunities, check out the program website, or call (386) 822-7436 or email Oliphant at boliphan@stetson.edu.

A study in consumer behavior

Marketing students and Conservation Biology students stand on New Smyrna Beach after cleaning trash and garbage from a section of sand.

Blue sky and white sand met a wave of “green” Marketing students when they hit the beach in late summer to clean up trash and gain a personal, direct perspective on consumer behavior.

Marketing major Justin Bosco triumphantly displays a bag of trash.

It’s a powerful behavior they hope to influence some day as marketing professionals, but it’s not always pretty.

Despite years of green marketing efforts by government and business aimed at changing behavior, students found beer cans, food wrappers, beach toys, bottle caps and hundreds, even thousands, of cigarette butts.

“It showed that some people do not care about the environment and will leave trash wherever they want,” said Kerry Burke, a junior Marketing major from Atlantic City, N.J.

“I don’t think they truly understand the impact they are having on the environment when they leave their garbage,” said senior Lyllique Roman of Kissimmee, a Sport Management major who is minoring in Business and Marketing.

“Until people start changing their habits and realizing the implications of their actions, trash will continue to be a problem,” said Justin Bosco, a junior from Vero Beach majoring in Marketing and Management. “Most of the items I found on the beach could have easily been disposed of if the people that left them weren’t so careless.”

Liz Harting, center, records the trash that Nina Laureano, left, and Alex Dobbs drop in the bag. Harting and Dobbs are Marketing students and Laureano is a Family Enterprise major.

Understanding the basic concepts and theories of consumer behavior and how that knowledge helps shape marketing strategies is the focus of Consumer Dynamics (MKG 316), a course taught this fall by Dr. Michelle DeMoss who used “green marketing” with a water theme to demonstrate the concepts.

“Green marketing is a powerful trend in the global marketplace,” said DeMoss, chair of the Marketing Department. “It illustrates the broader definition of marketing in that it demonstrates the importance of weighing the impact of marketing decisions on customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

DeMoss structured the course to support the goals of the Stetson GREEN program, using interdisciplinary activities and speakers that complemented study being done by Dr. Kirsten Work’s conservation biology students in the College of Arts & Sciences. Both professors’ students participated in the beach cleanup and shared speakers. One was Malissa Dillon, assistant director of Communications and Governmental Affairs at the St. Johns River Water Management District who visited classes in September.

Dillon is a marketer in the business of conserving and managing water, which depends greatly on consumer behavior, she told students.

“We are very dependent on consumer behavior,” she told the students. “Water is a kind of weird product, but you use the same marketing tools and concepts.”

Malissa Dillon, a government marketing professional, speaks to Consumer Dynamics students.

“You have to position the issues in the right way to get people’s attention and understanding. Use a simple message, make it memorable and include a call to action,” said Dillon.

Students peppered Dillon with questions about marketing budgets, water regulation, water sources, consumer trends, behavior and surveys.

As part of the course, students conducted in-depth interviews to understand the impact of internal and external factors on consumer decisions about green products. Students applied concepts learned in class to compare and contrast reasoning behind the decisions to better understand the dynamics that shape marketing strategies.

A supplemental text in the course is Jacquelyn Ottman’s “The New Rules of Green Marketing: Strategies, Tools, and Inspiration for Sustainable Branding.”

Two other community service cleanup projects also helped serve dual purposes for the course – understanding the impact of certain consumer behaviors and furthering Stetson GREEN goals, which include numerous environmental and community actions. The cleanup efforts targeted the inland wetlands of Bicentennial Youth Park and the coastal wetlands of Spruce Creek/Rose Bay.

All the course’s varied components help bring consumer behavior into focus, students say, and bring understanding that will help them in their careers.

Marketing student Kursten Lizarraga talks to marketer Malissa Dillon after class.

“Lessons like these can be applied not only to marketing careers but any career in the business world,” said Ryan Carter, a senior Marketing major from Mims. “With the economy how it is today, corporations and the market in general need to know how to better manage its most valuable resource – the consumer.”

“It’s highly important to remember throughout my career that one of my goals will be to always be consumer oriented,” said Kursten Lizarraga, a Marketing major from Port Orange.“The consumer is who will keep me in business and who will spread my product to their peers.”