“Real World” Experiences Remains Hallmark of McCormack Curriculum

One of the linchpins of our experiential-learning based curriculum is our annual “Octagon Bowl,” the culminating experience in Dr. Katz’s Sport Marketing class. For the 8^th year in a row, students competed in teams to presented marketing recommendations to a team of Octagon executives. This year’s client, Shell, was introducing a new premium gasoline and challenged our students to develop a “disruptive” sport marketing strategy to launch their new fuel utilizing a $1,000,000 budget. The photo shows this year’s winning team with Octagon executives.

Our Applied Sport Marketing Research class, taught by Dr. Delia, spent the semester designing research instruments and conducting research to inform the UMass Athletics department on their sport attendance and social media issues. The class culminated in several days of presentations to UMass Athletics administrators.

Students who took Professor McKelvey’s Retail Sales Promotion class had the opportunity to respond to promotion briefs provided by Brisk Iced Tea and Timex. The class culminated with teams of students presenting their research, rationale and retail sales promotion plan directly to the clients and their agency representatives.

For dual degree students in their second year, the capstone and culminating experience is our MBA Consulting Practicum projects. Strategic management briefs were provided by Bank of America, Under Armour and Right to Play USA. Students were assigned their projects based on their industry interests, and spent the Spring semester interacting directly with their clients, visiting the clients’ offices, attending their major sports events, and ultimately presenting their recommendations and solutions to executive teams.

These experiential-learning based projects provide students the opportunity to put into practice the extensive sport management theory that is taught in the classroom.