Students from East Mississippi Community College’s Business and Marketing Technology program took what their instructor, Dr. Joshua Carroll, calls an “epic trip” a few weeks ago. The group traveled from the Golden Triangle campus to the University of Alabama’s Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, before moving on to Turner Field in Atlanta and the Georgia Dome, which hosts the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl and Atlanta Falcons home games.
At each stop, Carroll and his students met and spoke with officials in charge of marketing each venue and event. They even took in a Braves game before returning to the Golden Triangle.
Dressed in business attire, the students presented a sharp front and impressed many they encountered. Some had a hard time believing the group was from Mississippi.
“Mississippi has a bad reputation sometimes outside of its borders. This group changes that perspective for Mississippi professionally,” said Mike Hainsey, executive director of the GTR Airport, a sponsor of the trip, along with Chik fil A in Columbus.
Students came away with valuable real-life marketing management tools,” Carroll said. They heard firsthand testimonies from Atlanta Falcons Vice President for Ticket Sales Don Rovak and the Atlanta Braves’ Brad Meriwether about their own rise from early marketing positions with a university to becoming sports league business professionals.
EMCC sophomore Carl Estes of Macon said, “I got the value of seeing into what marketing really is on a day-to-day basis for multi-million dollar athletic organizations and gained a lot of understanding in how to market products and services to fans.”
To cap the trip, student Hunter Roberts received a replica of the Atlanta Braves’ 1995 national championship ring when he correctly answered a question about what three teams the Braves met in the playoffs leading up to the World Series.
Jan Swoope is the Lifestyles Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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