From online advertising to designing mobile applications, new additions to curriculum at USC Marshall are allowing students to see their work applied in real-world settings. Associate Professor of Clinical Accounting KRISTEN SCHIELE’s new undergraduate courses focus on Digital Marketing Fundamentals (MKTG 425) and User Experience for Design and Marketing (MKTG 499). These brand new classes launched this fall, and they immediately garnered strong interest among students, leading to plans to integrate them into graduate programs as well.

“To prepare our students to be the next generation of business leaders, I utilize experiential learning (learning-by-doing), digital technologies, and community and global engagement in my course curriculum,” Schiele said.

Schiele spent spring 2022 in Portugal as a Fulbright Scholar at Politecnico De Lisboa in Lisbon. She and her colleagues at the School of Communication and Media Studies (ESCS) in Portugal were recently awarded a grant of 25,000 euros for their proposal “Digital Communication and Digital Marketing: A Cross-Cultural Learning Experience between PT and USA.” The proposal aims to develop a more cross-cultural curriculum for students in both countries to collaborate this spring term.

Students shared some of the skills they have been able to develop through the new curriculum. Celine Wen, a junior double majoring in psychology and economics and minoring in marketing and user experience, is currently enrolled in MKT425 Digital Marketing. Already, she has found Schiele’s course extremely helpful to her professional development.

“We often have guest speakers from diverse companies that educate us on expectations for specific jobs,” Wen said. “These guests always come with internship opportunities, which is extremely useful for current juniors and seniors like me. Personally, I was able to gain a user researcher internship thanks to Professor Schiele.”

This semester, students were able to meet and learn from Konrad Ribeiro, Head of Coaching for Americas Large Customer Sales at Google. Students learned more about operations during a visit to Google's Playa Vista office. Experiences like these allowed the class to work with real-life clients while integrating contemporary industry practices into the course.

“The class is organized into four large modules, each including topics such as social media marketing strategies, online reputation management, and search engine optimization,” Wen said. “The professor combines lectures and group projects during each session, making sure that we are applying all knowledge learned in class.”