Marketing assistant professor Joan Giese recently won a  national
marketing teaching award from the Academy of Marketing Science.

By Nella Letizia

The number of visitors to Joan Giese’s home page since Jan. 28, 2000, is more than 19,000. Part of the reason is because the WSU assistant professor of marketing teaches two sections of Marketing 360, "Principles of Marketing," a class that cuts across many different majors on campus and, this semester, draws roughly 400 students per semester to Heald Auditorium twice a week.

But Giese’s Web site is also the place to get the kind of help a student may require. Not only the class syllabus, but grades listed by ID number for confidentiality, class outlines of what was covered in class, samples questions for upcoming exams, even sample cover sheets for assignments. It’s a means to provide student access, even to a class of hundreds. Large classes don’t intimidate Giese. For her, teaching is a partnership between the student and the professor, regardless of class size.

"Students in a large class must take responsibility for their learning and their professional socialization, but they have to have a reason to come to class," she said. "I do provide learning options. They have some choice on what project they will complete.

"I consider teaching to be both an art and a science. Teaching is a creative, contingent process driven by well-articulated standards and measured by the attainment of learning goals."

The Academy of Marketing Science recently chose Giese as a 2001 Outstanding Teacher in Marketing. She was chosen for, among other reasons, demonstrating a dedication to her students through innovative and interesting pedagogical techniques and a high level of enthusiasm in disseminating marketing concepts in the classroom.

AMS, founded in 1971, has more than 1,500 international members and has published the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science since 1972.

Giese and three other winners will be featured at a special session of the AMS annual conference May 29-June 2 in San Diego and recognized at the annual awards luncheon May 31.

A doctoral marketing student, Alka Citrin, nominated Giese for the award. From her experience in a doctoral seminar Giese taught, Citrin said she was "amazed at the breadth and depth of knowledge and intellectual motivation that she provided during the semester. Though Prof. Giese was extremely demanding of us in terms of readings and research requirements, she constantly encouraged us to develop an integrative framework within which we could organize the different streams of literature. She also helped us periodically to refocus on the materials important to the seminar goals…

"I have been a student in a number of schools across the U.S. and overseas and can truly say that Prof. Giese brings the best of what I would expect to find in a teacher," Citrin said. "…She expects students to take an active role in their own learning but facilitates the means to do so by providing adequate background material and an empathy for different learning styles and abilities."

To make sure her students take an active role in learning, Giese tailors her material to fit what students will encounter in the workplace after they graduate. Last fall, she started a pilot project in Marketing 360 based on her experiences in a faculty internship with Microsoft last summer. In addition to sharing her expertise with company groups, Giese came away with some revelations for students about corporate culture. For example, quality of information is extremely important, yet deadlines are also very short. Teams are very dependent on each other for getting assignments done, but often, employees are not located in the same place.

The pilot project mimics these same constraints. Last semester’s pilot involved seven students. This semester, Giese expanded it to 50. The students are given an assignment about a marketing topic to complete in 10-14 days with very little face-to-face interaction—the goal is only one meeting—and more critical use of technology, such as e-mail and file sharing. The project concludes with a presentation.

"What I have learned most from the pilot project is that groups don’t always have to meet fact to face; sending attachments of an individual’s work is just as good and saves time. It was a great opportunity to try something different, and even more so, it was successful," said undergraduate marketing major Shannon Broz. "Working with people of different business majors was also an eye-opener. Some had the marketing background to take care of the bulk of the information, others had management skills to keep the group running smoothly, still others could do the technical portions of the projects with help from their MIS major."

"The approach of the pilot project was great. It gave an alternative to the everyday writing of papers," said undergraduate marketing major Kishia Agee. "It also allowed us students to interact with each other by communicating over e-mail, and not just face to face. This was an added challenge to the project, but one that allowed even more learning. This could also be seen as a problem with the project, but it worked for us. Overall, the project was a great learning experience and allowed students an opportunity to experience a real-life project."

Giese said it’s too soon to tell whether students might like or dislike the more technology-based approach to completing an assignment. "If nothing else, the exposure to this setting is extremely valuable. I guess it forces them to do something that exceeds their comfort level. I’m sure the project will evolve." She may ask industry representatives for ways to make the project even more real world or actual problems for students to tackle.

Giese added that she’s pleased to have earned the AMS honor. She’s received other honors for her teaching methods, including the WSU College of Business and Economics’ Outstanding Teaching Award in 1998, Marketing Professor of the Year from the Marketing department in 1997-98 and recognition in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers in 2000.

"It’s nice to know that what you do makes a difference and that it’s recognized at that level," she said.