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While students go to college to specialize in one area of study, many companies often expect college graduates to be familiar with more than just one--a dilemma leading to students changing their majors. Pepperdine’s Communication and Business divisions came up with a solution: They created a new major that covers three areas of study. This, of course, has captured much attention from students, and it’s becoming one of the most popular majors on campus. It’s Intergrated Marketing Communication (IMC).
Although IMC has been a contract major in the past, it will not be an official major until it’s added in the 2007-08 academic catalog. But the divisions are offering the major with the same curriculum as the real major, said communication professor Dr. Don Shores.
“The purpose of it is to allow a broader context for education of a person, so not only they are getting marketing and business, but they are also getting communication skills with advertising and public relations,” Shores said, who is the main advisor for this major. “In today’s industry, those areas marketing, advertising and PR are meshing to the point that having some background in all three is a great advantage in the job market.”
For seniors like Christine Paulson, having a degree in this major may help them find a job more easily.
“I like how diverse the major is,” Paulson said. “I think it’s a great major and the way that they structured everything.”
After graduation, she says she eventually wants to start her own marketing company.
“Definitely getting into marketing and also being experienced with the communication, public relations and advertising will give me more of a background for everything because that’s the way that the world is working right now,” she said.
Echoing Paulson, another IMC major, Caitlin Johnson, said companies are looking for graduates who have specialized skills in many areas of communication.
The former business major junior said she is not sure what she will do after she graduates from Pepperdine, but she is confident that she will have a lot of options to choose from with an IMC degree.
Another former business administration major also agreed.
“Since IMC covers a lot of divisions in the business world, it allows me to choose from different fields of business,” said junior Greg Goble.
Although Goble switched to IMC from business administration, it’s not that he didn’t like his previous major, he said. Some people like to learn a little bit of many things rather than to study one thing in depth. It is also often difficult for some students to decide which major they should declare.
“I think there was certain frustration at times where students are torn between being advertising major, public relations major, business major or marketing major,” Shores said. “They don’t want to choose one, but they want to do a little bit of all of it.”
He also said that the beauty of this major is that it allows students to pull together the best of all three and get the background of all three.
Having these intriguing features, IMC is becoming a popular major at Pepperdine. In fact, Shores said that students come to his office every week, wanting to add this major.
However, the major is not that easy to get into due to two requirements a student has to satisfy before being able to declare the major.
Students have to have more than 24 units completed and a GPA of 3.2 or higher.
“It is a tough major because once you get in, you are not just specializing one area, but you have to learn about and understand the backgrounds of all these three of these areas, which makes it a little more difficult than just one,” Shores said.
Submitted 09-28-2006
MALIBU, CA
