As seniors in Chapman University’s Strategic and Corporate Communication major, we’d like to share with you one of our favorite course throughout our time as an SCC major. Below, you can read our reflections using a style similar to “Rate my Professor” where we share our personal opinions and experiences in the class Fundamentals of Marketing here at Chapman University.

Review by Juliet Olsen

 As a student, I thoroughly enjoyed taking this course. Not only did I learn a tremendous amount of useful information and skills, but I was able to actively and inclusively participate making the class that much more meaningful. The marketing knowledge I’ve gained from this class is applicable to many different areas of a professional career. I now understand how to analyze businesses and their competitors while considering their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.  Due to this course, I can competently decipher a company’s environmental, political, social and technological responsibilities while also evaluating and even predicting consumer behavior. Marc Fawaz was my instructor for this course. As a senior student, he is by far the best lecturer I have had at Chapman University and he was even recently awarded the Most Inclusive Professor and Best Teaching Style of the year. I loved every lecture and would highly recommend taking this course.

Review by Karina Gomez

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If anyone has come across Professor Marc Fawaz’s Marketing 305 class and is considering taking it, I would like to give you some advice; please do!! Coming from a Communication degree background, I never really had a full understanding of business concepts such as Marketing. So, I decided to challenge myself and take on something different to increase my exposure; I am grateful I made this choice!  The class is unique in that it is intended for non-marketing/business majors.  Students from any academic background learn the basics of marketing in terms of its philosophies, processes and institutions as well as develop and improve upon communication and decision making skills.
At the start of interterm session, Professor Fawaz wasted no time in broadening our marketing horizons. The class of 70 students was instructed to split into 10 groups and choose a company we wanted to follow during the entirety of the course. By engaging the class in such a fun and creative way, we not only learned textbook concepts but also applied them to real life scenarios though the companies we chose which brought such clarity to the subject.
By taking Marketing 305 with such a well-respected and knowledgeable professor, I learned a very valuable takeaway.  BRANDING . I learned the importance of branding not only for a company but for yourself in terms of how you would like to be perceived and how being both involved and aware with consumers and as a consumer in terms of what’s going on around you can have such an impact. According to Marc Fawaz, “You are what you consume.”  Needless to say, this class had such a positive influence on me academically as well as personally.  If you are willing to put in the time and effort this class requires and find ways to make it applicable to yourself, you will not regret it!

Review by Sara Wagner

Marketing 305 is a course that will expose you to the widespread, yet crucial, fundamentals of a corporation. This class prepares you for the various aspects of business that other Communication classes might not have the opportunity to touch on.
At the onset of the course, we were instructed to form groups, which we worked with for the entire semester.  Once groups were assembled, each team decided on the organization they would represent from there on out. My group chose Amazon, so from day one, my team and I were considered representatives of that company. I also volunteered to be the leader of my Amazon team. This role had a lot of extra responsibility throughout the semester, but it made this class one of the most rewarding courses I have ever taken. Through this position as a team leader, I gained skills such as time management, delegation, and conflict resolution.
The instructor of this class, Professor Fawaz, utilized the Socratic method of learning, teaching us content and following it up with application questions. The style of instruction created attentiveness and enthusiasm from the students. We would learn the information, apply it specifically to our company, and then share our examples to the class from our company’s perspective. Professor Fawaz, inspired his students to learn in a creative way, keeping the class engaged and entertained, always sharing his overwhelming amount of knowledge on the business world.
This class is valuable to me because it taught me the fundamentals of businesses and the numerous elements that allow them to run. Not only is this information crucial because I aspire to work in organizations in my future, but it gave me knowledge as a consumer. I now have the awareness and the skillset to research a company, their practices, and their core beliefs, allowing me to make an educated decision on which companies I give my business to. This understanding is imperative as a customer, in the consumer heavy culture that we live in today. This class gave me knowledge for the real world, and I highly recommend it to students who are looking for a creative learning experience.

Review by Ashley Carney

Fundamentals of Marketing for Non-Majors, MKTG 305, is a very hands-on class that teaches students all of the marketing basics they need to know. This course allows students to explore each aspect of the marketing world, all while putting their knowledge into practice. I really enjoyed this course because it allowed me to be creative and work on projects that involved real companies. I was able to create things like advertisements and marketing plans, which really helped me learn the course topics. Overall, I would recommend this course for students because you learn all about marketing from the business and consumer perspective.