Welcome to the inaugural issue of AMA Career & Classroom, offering timely, practical advice for early-career marketing professors and all marketing instructors interested in teaching and mentoring undergraduate students.
The AMA has served the marketing academic profession since its founding in 1937, when the National Association of Marketing Teachers and the American Marketing Society merged. Over the years, marketing academia has changed in ways these founding groups could not have fathomed. AMA’s academic community has grown to a worldwide powerhouse—the only organization that serves the “big tent” of all that the study of marketing entails: consumer behavior, quantitative modeling, and strategy research. We take great pride in our place in the research community, and we offer many opportunities for service.
However, the teaching aspect of the academic career has not received as much attention, and early-career academics and teaching faculty face some daunting challenges. The field is changing: The adjunct professor and clinical faculty career tracks are an increasingly common phenomenon, fewer students follow the traditional high-school-to-college path, and universities are under greater pressure to demonstrate the value of an education. We understand that marketing educators could use some guidance.
In these pages, we aim to provide insights and conversation starters for classroom use, offering ways to easily integrate the latest AMA research into your teaching portfolio. We’ve hand-picked these topics to pique students’ interest with real-world relevance.
Educators are welcome to distribute these pages or link to the electronic versions to spark class discussion. Many of these articles provide linked teaching resources like tool kits, lecture slides, and case studies.
Other sections offer advice for professors on teaching, advising, and academic life, from leading voices in the academic marketing field. We hope you’ll find these nuggets of wisdom useful as you navigate your career. These scholars bring a wealth of experience to the table, and you may recognize some names as authors of well-known textbooks and seminal research articles.
We welcome your contributions to future issues. Please visit ama.org/career-and-classroom for submission guidelines, or contact me directly to express your interest.
It has been a pleasure developing this new publication with my team, and we hope the care and creativity that Michelle Kritselis, T.J. Anderson, and Karin Horler have brought to this endeavor shine through every page. And don’t forget—AMA members receive early access to AMA Career & Classroom, so if you’re not a member, consider joining! For more information, click the QR code below.
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Marilyn Stone is Director, Academic Communities and Journals, American Marketing Association.