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EDUCATION
“Any time we get an idea [for a new major], we think, ‘Do we need this? Are there jobs out there?’” — Jeff Woods, dean, College of Arts and Humanities, Arkansas Tech University
3. SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT
Arkansas State University
Arkansas State University in Jonesboro is expanding its bachelor of science in strategic communication with an emphasis in social media management. Media and communication professor Holly Kathleen Hall helped design this added option. “This is a huge job-growth area,” she said. ASU professors asked themselves what curriculum would meet the needs of what the industry was telling the school it was lacking. “When I started at A-State eight years ago, my former dean encouraged me to develop a class in social media, which rolled out about four or five years ago,” she said. “We started to get a lot of calls from local businesses saying they needed help in this area. We listened.” While she doesn’t yet have official numbers for the brand new program, Hall said she has a “handful” of students she advises who are enrolled in it. Many students in strategic communication choose more than one area of emphasis, and may also be enrolled in public relations and advertising courses. “We’ve been getting requests from ad and PR agencies, nonprofits, retail outlets, you name it,” she said of the major and its students. “One of the great things about this is that they can major in this and then they can find an industry they’d really like to promote” via social media. The focal class is social media in strategic communication, which teaches the strategic planning process, how to design platforms and how to write for social media specifically. They plan a social media campaign for a real client. Students must also earn Hootsuite 54
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certification so that when they graduate they are credentialed in this application. In fall 2016, ASU will offer interactive advertising, as well. They will also learn how to measure and monitor social media. “The handful of students I’m advising really like it,” Hall said. But, she said she doesn’t worry that they will produce more students than there are jobs in this specialty. “I get at least one email or phone call a week from a local organization saying, ‘We need help!’ We don’t have enough students to meet the need.” Yet. “We’ll be promoting the major over the next year so students can understand what kind of jobs they can have,” she said. “The demand is out there.”
4. INNOVATION & ENTREPRENEURSHIP University of Central Arkansas
When it comes to the market, supply and demand, the University of Central Arkansas in Conway has a new major in its College of Business: innovation and entrepreneurship. Michael Hargis is the dean who has been involved in its launch. “With any degree program, you don’t want to just create it because you’re interested in the topic,” said Hargis. He said that facts dictated their course: small businesses and startups play a significant role in economic growth, and innovation and creativity are important abilities in the business world given its pace of change and expansion of business models. This is UCA’s fourth year with its innovation and entrepreneurship program and it has more than 60 majors. “We are preparing students for two dif-
ferent paths,” said Hargis. “One is to walk out the door and start their own business — whether a retail store or coffee shop — but the reality is that many college students don’t have access to capital, networks or infrastructure, so the other path is placing students in small and large businesses that realize the benefit of a creative, smart workforce.” He said UCA has entrepreneurship graduates in different job titles and business focuses, including what he referred to as “intrapreneurship,” which means to apply entrepreneurial values internally to grow and advance businesses, or business units within organizations. “Our degree program tries to create pipelines and platforms to succeed. In fact, our students are frequently in business-plan competitions across the state,” he said. UCA’s new major is like an incubator program, as students are very focused on business creativity and innovation. “They learn to recognize the difference between an idea and business demands, they identify problems and solutions, and they develop new products.” In fact, it’s possible that throughout their coursework, they’re working toward a single, entrepreneurial end. “This major gives students early exposure to the need-based business. They use the subsequent classes in the major to build out their business plans, and they build a portfolio as they work their way through the program with plans and prototypes,” said Hargis. “The capstone class is a business-plan class to integrate everything from the idea to finance, teamwork and management.” “There is an art to creativity and innovation,” Hargis said. “You can get better at it.”
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