JO\N\NG F'OItc..ES T his year. the American Marketing Association (AMA) jOined forces with the public relations majors from the College of Communications to furth er each o ther's skill sets. The leading professor s of the two gr oups, Professo r of Communication Dr. Jack Shock and Professor of Business Lori Sloan decided to give this j oint venture a shot in o l'd e r to let their st udents learn from each other and \ 0 make a powerhouse team. "One of th e goals for the campus at the begi nni ng of the yeal' was encouraging u s to coope rate and inte rdisciplinary shal'e; build QUI' kn owledge base," Shock said . The goal fo r th e merger was for each group of students to bring their own skills to the table. According to Sh ock, th e pub– lic I'elat io n s students were able to provide strong writing, st rate– gic communicat ion and advertising skills. The AMA members were able to br ing t heir marketing and business knowledge to th e group to create a dynamically productive atmosphe re. "I'm looking fOlward to a very strong partne l'ship between th e Coll ege of Communications and the College o f Business." Shock said. Before this year, AMA was composed primarily of business and market ing students, but was open to anyone. It has been an important force on th e campus for th e past few year s with events like Pizza Wars, Barbecue War s and the Long Dr ive Comp et i– tion. Each event was a fund raiser for a charity ch osen by AMA. typically the Sunshine School. All of these events were open to the community. and AMA was happy to rely on th e n ew public rela ti o n s stud ents to use their skills to help publicize the events . ''I'm co unting on the public r elations stud ents helping us maximize our exposure and for my students currently in AMA freshmen Yeo Jln Yoo and Hannah Shelton. and sophomore Bethany Brown talk at the Interna– tional Business Etiquette dinner Nov. 5. Each table had a speaker along with guests to talk about their different cultures. Nick Mic hael Enjoying their d inner Nov. S. are junior Chuma Ike– orho and sophomore Caleb Callari. Both stu– dents were speakers at this international event. Nick Michae l 202 organizations to understand how important PR is," Sloan said. " It is su ch a huge piece of your plan. " The goal for AMA was to provide th e oppor tun ity for any student to get involved and participate in fund raisers and events and to also work on real market ing promotion projects. Every year AMA participated in a nat ional case comp etition where they wer e given th e task to come up with a marketing st rategy for a company. From the start, Sloan was excited to get th e PR stu – d ents in on this competitio n for their skills. This case competi – tion was for a real company and a lot of the times t he company took the winner's idea and employed it as their marketing strat – egy. On some occasions , the company has eve n hired th e leader of the winning tea!l1. Another big aspect o f Harding's AMA was thei r an nual trip. Each year, certain members of the AMA, based on their level of participation , traveled to either Dallas or Nashvill e, Tenn., to visi t different businesses for meetings, networking, education and just to see how they operate. "Under the big marketing umbrella we all fit under the r e, and I wan t the kids to learn how to interact and work together," Sloan said. "Vve n eed all those maj ors to do an e ffective cam– pa Ign. Uniting th e PR st udents with the cur rent AMA stud ents for one common goal was an important nOli o n th at o the r majors and groups m ight consider after seei n g how this syn e rgi stic merger played out. "We are all about partnership an d sharing our differe nt skill sets," Shock said. "You cannot be a one area specialist; you have to be a generalist in a way to be competitive." Steven Chandler
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