One Of My Favorite Classes At Bradley

Academics are a large part of college and I have had the opportunity to get a stellar education from Bradley. One of my favorite classes was a class that all marketing majors take, it is Marketing Research and it has taught me so many valuable things about not only marketing but things I have applied to my everyday life ever since. This class taught me how to do marketing research, hence the title, but I also learned more in-depth in topics of statistics, the creation of surveys, and sharpened up my excel skills. Marketing Research is something I came to realize is done no matter what job or field you end up in and is definitely relevant to the rest of my life. In this course, you are partnered with a real company and are attempting to help them solve a potential problem they have based on the results of a research study you compose and execute for them. In my case, we were looking at a non-profit and attempting to determine how they could gain more donations from current donors as well as gather new donors. As a group of 5, we were able to compose a survey using software that Bradley has called qualtrics, distribute that survey through social media, and other communication options such as text and via email to get a diverse group of respondents. After gathering the results we were able to analyze them using the statistical skills we had gained in other classes at Bradley as well as in this marketing course and come up with a viable solution for the company. We then created a presentation to present to them in a formal setting on what we see as the best option for them moving forward using the results of our survey while showing graphs and other statistics to back up our recommendations. We presented an hour-long presentation at the end of the semester to them with demographic information on who answered the survey and what the responses we got were. The company was then able to ask questions of us and we are able to show how deep our knowledge was as well as help them fix the problem they presented us with.

While you are probably thinking wow this class is amazing how can it get any better, you would not believe how amazing the professor is. The professor was my marketing advisor, helped me create my schedule, and made sure I was on track each semester, so I already had a well-established relationship with him. This class, however, deepened my relationship with him and showed me how great this professor was as a teacher, person, and advisor. This professor made each student know how valuable they were and make sure everyone was up to speed on the topics without forcing anyone to learn on their own and giving everyone the resources they needed to succeed. I don’t know anyone who disliked this professor and I felt fortunate to have him as an advisor as well as professor for marketing research and another marketing course I took before this one with him titled Product and Pricing. In the craziness of Covid interrupting our semester partway through, I was feeling very down and confused about what to do, and this professor made a point to make it clear he was there for us as both students and people. On multiple occasions in April and March of the pandemic, I had conversations with him regarding topics unrelated to class because he was checking in to make sure we as students were doing good in general with everything going on in the world. 

I could go on and on about how amazing this individual professor is but I think that he is just one of the many amazing people who work at Bradley. I am probably biased being a marketing student at Bradley, but I can honestly say I think all of the marketing professors go above and beyond for us as students to make sure we succeed in class and outside of class. I highly recommend the marketing department and all of the professors in it.