Social Media ‘Creeping’ Into Universities
November 11, 2008 by Kristie Wells
This past Sunday Chris Heuer led a session on Social Media at the California Phi Beta Lambda Fall Business Conference at the UC Berkeley campus.
The room was packed with suited college students wanting to know what this fella in a sport coat and jeans was going to share all the buzz about Social Media was about. A quick survey of the room informed us of the 30+ there, not a single one was being taught Social Media practices in their Marketing classes. Needless to say, this was a surprising fact to learn. Things are moving fast in the Marketing/PR world and it is clear Universities need to modernize their curriculum by bringing in industry leaders to help teach the tools of the trade to ensure these students have a fighting chance when they graduate.
I do know of a couple of Universities offering Social Media/PR 2.0 teachings in their curriculum; Professor French at Auburn University and Alex de Carvalho at University of Miami. Sad that I can only name two off the top of my head right now, so if you know of more, please leave a comment here as I would love to keep track of what happening in our schools as this is a large part of our Media Literacy project.
Chris took them through his 4 C’s presentation and set the stage for WHY they wanted to integrate Social Media into their Marketing plans of the future. Also encouraged them to read the Cluetrain Manifesto to dive into the whole ‘markets are conversations’ ideology.
The slides are available here and there was a short video interview with Chris about his participation in the Future Business Leaders of America and helped to shape who he is today.
It is amazing that more schools aren’t teaching social media yet, but also not, considering how long it takes for new blood to seep into faculty positions (TAs, of course, have no say over curriculum content). I’m in business school right now, planning to go on and get a PhD so I can teach social media marketing (and assorted other topics) at a university, but it will be about 5 years before I get a crack at creating my own class, if I’m lucky. So the onus is on current faculty to get cracking, but there is a good deal of unease (from what I can tell, anecdotally) among faculty regarding social media. Many do not get involved because they don’t want to weaken the wall between themselves and their students. Many don’t have blogs because they are worried about IP issues. It’s a problem.
We had a guest speaker in my marketing class not long ago who was supposed to talk to us about social media marketing, but she was a 20-year veteran of advertising, and, although she was sort of vaguely enthusiastic about it her main message seemed to be “this changes everything and I’m not exactly sure how.” The phrase “it’s a catastrophe” was repeated more than twice.
I think there’s a real need for a speakers’ bureau of non-faculty social media practitioners to go into classrooms and give some of the presentations that have become de rigeur at podcamps across the nation (and world).
Wow. That’s actually really shocking to me. Gets my little brain working, maybe I could come up with some ad hoc courses to shop around to some of the many universities in DC…. You can’t call yourself a marketer and not have some experience with social media marketing. It’s too important.
Ball State just announced it will be launching an “emerging media initiative”:
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.san&s=96079&Nid=50071&p=179306
I would have to assume that includes social media marketing.
It’s mind blowing that there are marketing programs completely ignoring social media! I attend Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where you won’t find a related course in Marketing, Communications, Journalism – nada. I wrote a post two months ago about IUP’s failure to teach the medium.
http://shawnfarner.com/blog/2008/10/06/social-media-u-not-here/
Honestly, though – because universities are not actively teaching students about it, it makes almost-graduates (one week!) like me a little bit more valuable.
So should I be complaining?
Thanks Kristie for the post.
We’re (my company) trying to do some things here in Boston, as we feel really strongly about leveraging the local universities and being proactive about educating them on social media so that they can enter the workforce (where we’ll eventually meet them for good).
After having graduated from an MBA program that had negligible focus on new media, I see a real hole, one that usually takes a while for academia to fill. Why not take the initiative ourselves to fill that hole, as it will eventually be to our benefit?
I try to, at the very least, do a guest lecture or two on new media in terms of either the technology, marketing, or social causes.
You can see a little more about our philosophy here: http://tinyurl.com/67z7dg
Beth – One of the pieces of our Media Literacy project (http://www.socialmediaclub.org/projects/) is to build out a speakers’ bureau and encourage professors and teachers to bring folks in to expose the students to the tools, the practices, etc. I was actually chatting with Des Walsh (in Brisbane, Australia) about this the other day and telling him several of our chapters are reaching out to the universities in their local area and inviting the students and the professors to the monthly SMC gatherings as a way of extending their knowledge. It is working on some cities, no so much in others – but it is a start. I would love to start a real global campaign to partner with the schools – getting them to come to the meetings, getting them to bring speakers in talk to the class, helping them generate curriculum to use. Big project, but one I would like to see done. We are working on pieces of this already under the SMC umbrella and would love your input and participation if you are up for it.
Maddie – would love your participation the SMC program (see response to Beth).
Kari – thank you for the link. Will look into Ball State to see what their classes consist of.
Shawn – Well, there is definitely opportunity for people who have the experience (now) to generate a living off training and educating. SMC wants to promote media literacy within schools and universities and it can be done in both free environments as well as paid consulting – I just want to make sure there is a good lot of both.
Kate – thanks for being proactive in this. See response to Beth above on the ‘teaching the teachers’.
I am completely up for it. Just let me know how I can help — I would *love* to be involved in creating a global speakers’ bureau for colleges and universities.
let’s make it happen.