By: Claire Cutting

Students take Bellbrook High School’s Marketing course for a variety of different reasons. Some have a future career in mind. “I took this class because I am interested in majoring in business, and I wanted to get a feel for marketing,” senior Julia Fleck said. 

Others were placed in the class but ended up loving it. “I was just put into marketing, but now I love it because I get to collaborate with others,” junior Venus Aggarwal said. 

Every year, Josh Craig’s Marketing class collaborates with a special guest to uncover solutions to real-world problems. This year, counselor Khris Scohy asked the class, “What are the most effective ways to present course offerings at Bellbrook High School?” Student researchers worked together to interview students at the school, survey teachers, and gain valuable insights to help improve how the counseling department conducts its course scheduling process.

The student’s first task was to collect their data, which encouraged the student to be hands-on and gave them a feel for what a career in marketing would feel like. “I feel like I learned how to navigate creativeness with efficiency,” junior Presley Scott said. “This is a tool that I can now use later in life, which is helpful.”

After the data was collected, the student researchers collaborated with their groups to create a final marketing report. Katie Griffin, a senior taking the class, agrees with Scott. “I loved all of the different ideas that people came up with for the project. It opens up so many doors and opportunities,” Griffin said.

When analyzing the data, every research group found that many of their peers learned about offered courses, and chose their courses, through word-of-mouth. After understanding this information, the groups created slide presentations, which they then presented to their classmates, teachers, and administrators. “This project gave me a lot of space to improve upon my public speaking,” Griffin said.

“This project was very impactful because it allowed me to learn how to effectively collect valuable data and then present it in a compelling way,” junior Gabe Woods said.

After the presentations, the class is now focusing on the promotional side of marketing. Currently, groups are designing promotional advertisements to display the data they previously collected.

As the class enters into the next phase of marketing, the students reflect on the impact they are having on their school scheduling process. “This class has just taught me so many life lessons, and I can see the impact it’s having on our school,” Aggarwal said.