Two separate programs decided to partner up for the creation of an integrated marketing minor. The minor consists of courses within the Media, Communications and Visual Arts Department, along with courses from the Lubin School of Business. 

The idea generated from Lubin last spring, where professors had reached out to Department Chair, Paul Ziek and questioned whether the MCVA department would be willing to participate in the minor. The two schools created a seamless connection and the strengths of two departments were prevalent in the process of passing the minor through the variety of committees without any challenges.

In addition, on the MCVA side, all the courses participating within the minor were already created and have been offered before, which helped increase the speediness of the process. However, now the department has to ensure these classes connected to the minor run frequently enough so that students have the opportunity to take them. 

The minor consists of 15 credits and gives students the freedom to pick some of the courses they have a desire to take. They are required to take one consumer communications course, one advertising course, one writing course and two media/marketing communications campaigns courses. Some of these courses have prerequisites that students have to take beforehand. 

The creation of this minor comes at a time, where the demand for marketing, advertising, promotion and communication employees is high. Associate Chair and Professor Michelle Pulaski Behling, otherwise known as Dr. P, commented on the prevalence of the minor within various industries.

“It’s a very current field and so many people are hiring in this area because it’s all about content and promotion,” Dr. P said.  

This minor will help students in a variety of job positions such as Social Media Promotions, Marketing, Marketing Communications Manager, Event Planner, Public Relations Director and Promotions Director. This minor sparked an interest in senior communications major Rebecca Newman, at the  MCVA Welcome Back event that was held in September.

“I am interested in this minor because I have already done some marketing classes and this will be a combination of marketing, advertising, communications, and public relations,” Newman said.

In fact, Newman already had plans for a marketing minor, but with this new minor coming into play, she may switch out of her marketing minor, in order to receive the integrated marketing communications minor instead. This minor helps include all of her interests within the fields of marketing, communications, advertising and public relations in one set degree.

These Marketing and Communications programs are being implemented around the country in various universities, due to the popular demand of the field. Pulaski Behling, acknowledged that this minor helps Pace keep-up, as well as get ahead of its competitors. 

Furthermore, this minor allows students to create connections within both departments and expands the possibilities of courses. 

“It allows [students] to be exposed to courses in another department, they might not take otherwise. So our students would get to take… some business courses and vice versa. It allows them to get the benefits of both departments,” Dr. P stated. 

Students are able to start filling out the paperwork to add the minor onto their Pace Path Plan.  The next step in the process is for the departments to increase the promotion of this minor and get students interested enough.       

“We feel that we definitely have some overlap with our courses and there are definitely some similarities across the two departments, so we really wanted to capitalize on those similarities and benefit both groups of students, Dr. P said.

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Writers Note: Lubin’s contact did not respond for comment. If they would like to add to the story they can contact the writer at [email protected] or 203-297-4384.