Iowa State’s marketing department may make changes to curriculum by offering three tracks to students.

The program would move from what Russell Laczniak, professor and chair of marketing, described as a “vanilla generic” program to a segmented track approach, which he said will better reflect the needs of employers.

“We’re trying to align the skills that they can acquire with three main sorts of roles that students might have when they are employed,” Laczniak said.

The proposed tracks are professional selling, analytical marketing and branding. Professional roles that match the tracks are salesperson, marketing analytics person and brand manager, respectively.

“Not only are we expanding the curriculum in those areas, we are bringing it right up to current day,” said Doug Walker, assistant professor of marketing.

He said that a digital marketing class is being considered, which would include social media components. Other course additions would follow.

Students will not be required to choose a track, but have the options to tailor their coursework toward a specific job.

“All that was here is still here, there’s just more opportunity,” Walker said.

The professional selling track includes more hands-on experiences like those in Marketing 343, personal sales. Students in this course work in conjunction with CAT employers to market and sell products to them as they role play buyers.

Analytical marketing will be focused on analyzing and making decisions based on data.

Laczniak said that this track is different than a traditional marketing degree and that the advisory council of area professionals is excited about this track.

“Often times students major in marketing because they are good with soft skills,” Laczniak said. “This is very analytically driven and very hard skill oriented.”

Unprecedented opportunities are available in marketing, said Walker. He said that these new opportunities quantitative ones.

Branding, the third track, will allow students to think about the concept of brands and brand promotion.

Mallory Cates, a freshman in marketing, said that she thinks the track system will be a good thing.

“It’s more narrow, so it’ll show people that they are more specialized,” Cates said.

Walker said that he hopes that this will result in recruiters coming to Iowa State for jobs that they have not previously recruited for from the marketing major or the school, particularly analytic jobs.

“It’s much less about what’s on their transcript as it is about tailoring their marketing education to what they want to do,” Walker said.

This change is possible now due to an increase of faculty in the past five years. The department has been gathering a strategic core of faculty for a few years to be able to execute this plan, Laczniak said.

Joon Wook Park, who has a doctorate from Penn State, taught at Southern Methodist University and has been hired as an analytics professor. Beatriz Periera recently finished her doctorate at the University of Michigan and will teach branding.

Laczniak said that there is a collective enthusiasm among faculty about these opportunities.