Individual Fellow Initiatives

Internships have increasingly become a critical step in the college-to-career transition in the media industries and beyond.

For some time now the humanities have been “in crisis,” but the crisis is becoming acute: majors in nearly all humanities fields have been sharply declining, enrollments are down, hiring of tenure-track faculty is down, and, at some colleges and universities across the United States, whole departments are being eliminated. Here at the University of Texas, majors that are growing seem to be ones that promise a literal return on investment (invest money in a degree and get that money back, in the form of a well-paying job upon graduation) or at least suggest an obvious and practical use.

This initiative has been archived in compliance with University policies and legal requirements related to communications and web presence. If you have questions about this initiative, or any others, please reach out to the Center for Teaching and Learning for more information.

Marketing is inherently an applied science and, as a result, students learn the most when they can see marketing theories, constructs, and models in action. Marketing is at the intersection of so many academic disciplines—economics, statistics, psychology, sociology, organizational theory and decision science; and to see the way in which each of these disciplines influences marketing decisions requires the real-world dynamics of marketing-decision-making in a dynamic real-world context.

Since my first semester at UT (Fall 2011) I’ve taught about 10,000 students across all colleges. From this immense amount of student interaction, I’ve come to believe that many of our students lack the tools and techniques to define their own personal path to success and are not confident in how to best make decisions about their future.  As a result of this, I believe many students are seeking what they see as a “safe path” (e.g.