Every year
the American Marketing Association (AMA), a leading organization and resource
for marketers and academics, gives the Student Marketer of the Year award to
one AMA Collegiate member who demonstrates superior leadership, service to AMA,
academic achievement, and impact on their community. This year’s winner,
beating out students from over 360 chapters in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, was
Amanda Hepner, a senior marketing and management major at Texas State
University.
For many
college organizations, once you join, pay the twenty dollar membership fee and
pick up your t-shirt, there is nothing actually done through the club. It looks
good on a resume but you may have not have achieved anything. But AMA is just
the opposite. “We have speaker meetings, workshops, field trips, job shadowing,
community service, professional and social events, the list goes on,” Amanda
says. You gain personal and professional growth while being a part of AMA and
get the chance to meet a lot of cool people along the way.
Her best
advice to new members (and this applies to any organization you join) is to
“get involved and get hands on.” With so many ways to take advantage of the
association no one should feel like they gained nothing from it during their
time in college. The members got the chance to visit the offices of Dell and
ADP to see what day to day work life would be like. Getting a glimpse of how
their marketing degrees could be used in the real world after college is a
great insight that many students do not get the chance to experience.
With such an
activity filled group it is no surprise that it is comprised of “a group of
students who aspire to be successful and develop our professional careers and
network but also have fun” as Amanda describes them. The AMA Collegiate
Chapters are there to help students become successful, like Amanda, by
furthering their professional development through leadership training and
involvement in the field of marketing.
