By: Emma Gonzalez
Contributor
Students gathered in Room 122 of the School of Business on Sept. 23, for business insights on marketing, interactive activities and pizza.
The Professional “Enrichment Program”, directed by Patty Conte, who is also the internship coordinator, strives to help students learn about various business topics from professionals.
“We do this twice a week on Mondays and Wednesdays from 1 to 2,” Conte said, “we bring in a variety of business professionals who come in and talk to students about interesting and pertinent business topics.”
Margaret Rodgers, executive director of the Finance Development and Training Institute Alliance was the highlighted speaker of this PEP talk.
She focused on market research and how to get customer insight to find data on a product and better it.
Students around the room ate their pizza slices while partaking in the first activity, acting as the consumer for a real marketing survey that Rodgers is working on revolving around pimple patches.
The goal was to show students how to perform different types of market research on a product that revolves around consumers.
“There’s a side of business that we learned about today, that’s about surveying and how to approach and market to your consumers, which I didn’t think was such a big thing,” finance major Afif Hazim, a junior, said.
Students were first shown an image of different blob figures on a tree.
They were asked to describe which blob they feel like the most when dealing with a pimple, many of the students describing feeling embarrassed or gross. Then, Rodgers described qualitative data, a method of research
Four student volunteers sat at the front of the room to partake in a mini focus group, one of the students, human resource management major Jazmin Vivar-Atarama a junior, took the opportunity to participate first-hand and gain some experience.
“I’m new to business school because I just changed my major, so I wanted to try and reach out and talk to new people,” Vivar-Atarama said.
Those four students answered more specific questions, such as what kind of pimple patches they use, and why they started using them.
All the other students then pointed out the most important takeaways from the mini focus group, and what they believed would most likely help the product succeed.
After the research was complete, Rodgers allowed students to approach her and ask her questions, as well as connect with her for opportunities in the future.
“I know networking is a big thing in the business world, so I decided to come and I’m trying to do as much networking as possible,” Hazim said.
Rodgers also told students that she had a career with many different focuses.
She went from corporate, to entrepreneurship, to now executive leadership and the key is to keep going and learning.
“Because I changed my major, I was really scared I wouldn’t be able to catch up,” Vivar-Atarama, said, “but she just made me feel so much better because she was talking about how she started somewhere different than where she ended up, and she just kept learning.”
Conte mentioned that if students attend three PEP Talks about the same topic, they can earn a certificate which can go on their resumes.
