Marketing MajorKalie Walter

"The Eberly College of Business and Information Technology has given me the opportunity to challenge my academic abilities and has been a major contributor to my success at IUP. The knowledge I have gained from the faculty within the college will prove to be extremely beneficial once I begin my career in Marketing. I can say with confidence that my education from our AACSB accredited business program has provided me with a beneficial understanding of crucial business functions and operations, while also giving me the chance to build lifelong relationships with many of my peers."

After researching and visiting different universities during my senior year of high school, I was not entirely satisfied with any of them until I came across IUP. I am from Kane, Pennsylvania, which is considered to most as the middle-of-nowhere. Graduating with a little over one hundred students in my class, I knew that it was time to expand. The moment I stepped on to IUP's campus, I felt right at home, and my college search was finally complete.

After researching several of the colleges within the university, it was simple to decide upon the Eberly College of Business as my new home for the next four years with a major in Marketing. One of the main reasons as to why the program appealed to me was for the fact that the curriculum was very math intensive. I have always enjoyed challenging myself with my academics, and mathematics is definitively one area that has been able to do so, which is also one of the reasons as to why I chose Applied Statistics as a minor.

Along with my coursework, I have been employed as the Safety Sciences department student office worker. For the past three years I have been able to use my employment to work on many skills that include but are not limited to: time management, prioritizing, and paying extreme attention to detail.

I had a Marketing Internship through Global Spectrum at the Kovalchick Complex and Athletic Center which is located on IUP's campus. This position not only shed light on the many areas of sports and entertainment marketing, but it also gave me the chance to network with the entire Global Spectrum team along with other industry marketing professionals.

While assisting the KCAC's Marketing Director with daily assigned duties during scheduled office hours and during the arena's events, I was able to get hands on experience in various avenues of the marketing field that I could not get access to in the classroom. One important duty of mine as the marketing intern was to segment and target certain demographics with various promotional techniques for upcoming sporting and entertainment events in order to maximize ticket sales. Along with individual ticket sales, another part of my internship was to contact various companies and organizations in hopes of increasing group ticket sales for certain events.

I was also responsible for pre-event activities; there were many tasks that I was in charge of both during and after sporting and entertainment events. During both men's and women's basketball games at the arena, along with two other interns, I had the job of organizing many promotional items for distribution. In order to spark interest among the audience it was important for us to come up with creative and engaging promotions to get the crowd involved. Other duties that I was responsible for as the Marketing Intern at the KCAC, were maintaining the center's social media sites and being a part of the organization's grassroots marketing team.

Overall, the internship position that I held through the Kovalchick Complex and Athletic Center was an experience that I would never want to change. It not only helped me grow personally, but professionally as well. I am more than confident that I will be able to excel in my first position upon graduating due to many of the things I learned through my marketing internship.

Several other organizations that I have been affiliated with include Phi Eta Sigma and Beta Gamma Sigma honor societies. These nationally recognized societies have encouraged and recognized my academic achievement, and have given me the ability to foster many lifelong relationships.