The Southern

Issue date: 2/1/08 Section: News

Photo courtesy of Leah Gustavson Sarah House, third from the left, Arnaldo Abreu fourth from the left, Dr. David Grossman, center, Leah Gustavson, third from the right, and Arden Mitchell, second from the right, meet with Chevy executives in Atlanta.

In Dr. David Grossman's marketing management class, 21 students were given an opportunity not listed in the Florida Southern College Academic Catalogue-the opportunity to enter the real world and put their education into practice.

Three years ago, Grossman discovered EdVenture Partners Inc., a group that works with companies such as General Motors and colleges such as FSC. Instead of traditional lectures and case studies, this program gives students the opportunity to solve timely and realistic issues with hands-on experience, Grossman said.

He explained that the program is so successful because students get the chance to work together to form a marketing firm, assign tasks, research the problem, recommend a solution, implement it and then measure the success. The hard work of the class was visible during last semester's Chevy Week, when the students promoted the company through surveys, prize giveaways and Chevy-based events.

"In some cases, students really take hold of the project and develop some neat ideas that could never be done by a marketing executive because they have not been a college student for quite some time and they forget how the world is different," Grossman said.

FSC fall 2007 graduate, Arnaldo Abreu, said that "the class allowed us to break from [the traditional] method and be challenged in a way that no other class has before. We never really went too much from the book in this course, because everything we knew was being tested every single day in the best way possible, in real life."

"This class enabled us to actually put to use everything I have learned in my previous three years at Florida Southern. This kind of experience is what we all will be experiencing in the real world after college," he said.

Sarah House, senior, said that the class was an experience that she never thought she would get before graduation.

Arden Mitchell, senior, agreed. The class was "unlike any other," she said.

Continued...

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