Teaching

As a young person, I struggled mightily with academics, attending eleven schools between junior high and high school.  I never went to college.  Today, my course in brand development and digital strategy at Belmont University is among the most-recommended of the Entertainment Industry Studies undergraduate major.  My secret is taking an immersive approach, wherein students are assembled into teams and tasked with branding and marketing a client of their own throughout the semester.  Their core skills are acquired through a combination of classroom lectures and a range of course materials.  At semester’s end, each team presents their results to a panel of esteemed judges, which in the past have included executives and successful entrepreneurs from a range of backgrounds such as advertising agencies, major and independent record labels, mainstream radio personalities and more.

The highlight of the experience so far, aside from watching students land jobs in the field as a result of the class, was winning the Adjunct Professor of the Year Award in 2010.  I even called my mom to brag about it.