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Marketing and Interdisciplinary Business

Marketing encompasses more than the product, building success through communication and relationships that develop and ensure customer loyalty. Interdisciplinary business reaches beyond traditional business spheres, forging connections across law, media, government, and other sectors of society. Our graduates in both majors are creative thinkers who bring people together to create shared value.

About the Department

An outstanding learning environment is our first priority. Small classes emphasize discussion and team-based projects, modeling the professional world. Faculty are forward-thinking scholars and practitioners, recognized for their wide-ranging expertise. Course work connects function with philosophy across multiple disciplines. We encourage our aspiring business professionals to reach beyond their own narrow interests—and their organization’s—to consider how their work can add value in our society.

Marketing and interdisciplinary business are specializations within the Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (BSBA) program.

Close Faculty Mentorship

Close Faculty Mentorship

Small classes are the foundation for collaborative learning between students and their faculty mentors.

Tie Theory to Practice

Tie Theory to Practice

Use professional tools and databases to produce real-world projects, from policy analyses to ad campaigns.

Internships Open Doors

Internships Open Doors

CNBC, Marie Claire, Johnson & Johnson, PVH/Calvin Klein: Our students put top spots on their résumés.

Programs of Study

Bachelor of Science in Business Administration

The BSBA program provides both breadth across core business disciplines and depth within one specialized area of business. All students complete the required business core that constitutes the school’s Common Body of Knowledge, including courses in economics, accounting, finance, and other disciplines. Of the four specializations available to students in the BSBA program, our department offers two: marketing and interdisciplinary business.

Marketing Specialization

Course work in the marketing specialization prepares students to help their organizations achieve success by considering the needs of customers in a society increasingly concerned with such complex issues as sustainability and social responsibility. Some marketing professionals strategize new products and services that improve people’s lives. Others create campaigns that build community consensus or raise awareness of policy issues or social problems. They are all creative thinkers with the ability to analyze many kinds of information and collaborate with a wide range of colleagues, from statisticians and psychologists to packaging engineers and multimedia designers.

The marketing specialization builds on the core business curriculum with required and elective courses in areas such as communications and advertising, international marketing, professional selling, service marketing, and consumer behavior.

Two minors—one in marketing and one in professional selling—allow students to complement any major with a business-oriented course of study.

Program Requirements

Interdisciplinary Business Specialization

A great choice for those with passions beyond business, this specialization allows students to create their own path, designing a custom curriculum that connects business with career sectors from government to music to engineering. Students take courses across a variety of business disciplines, rather than concentrate in one area while complementing their studies with courses outside of the business school. All students work with an adviser to develop a purpose-driven program, including four interdisciplinary option courses as well as a secondary focus of study.

Students may pursue any discipline—in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences—while building a strong foundation in business. Students within this specialization choose from the following tracks:

Guided self-designed track provides the flexibility to combine business and non-business courses to support any career interest, from sports marketing to arts management to health care finance, among many others.

Business and public policy track targets the ways in which government policy and regulation intersect with business, preparing students for graduate study as well as careers in both the public and private sectors.

Innovation track invites students to think about how they can change the world. Innovation is an interdisciplinary search for new solutions, including new products, services, social enterprises, and institutions. The track explores the process of innovation, where new ideas come from, how students can learn to generate innovative solutions, how and why certain conditions promote innovation and the ethical and social implications of innovation. The track will invite students to combine innovation-specific courses with coursework from outside the business school to develop the interdisciplinary insights that can inspire innovative thinking.

A minor in business and society allows students to explore the relationship between business and individuals, communities, and government and is a valuable complement to any major.

Program Requirements

Student Organizations

There are two student organizations at TCNJ specifically focused on marketing. TCNJ has a student chapter of the American Marketing Association, the largest professional marketing organization in North America. Worldwide, its members include students, professors, and working professionals in the field of marketing. The AMA is ideal for students interested in all aspects of marketing. TCNJ also has a chapter of Pi Sigma Epsilon which is particularly suited for students focused on the sales area of marketing.

Emphasis on Experiential Learning

We encourage our students to make the most of school-wide opportunities, gaining international perspectives through study abroad or developing leadership skills in our many student organizations and honor societies. Our department also builds experiential learning into the curriculum, preparing students for the realities of the professional world through the practical application of skills and knowledge.

Community Engaged and Project Based Learning

Create meaningful change while learning your craft through courses that integrate real-world collaborations with community partners. When a local alternative high school for at-risk youth lost a major source of funding, marketing students and high school students worked together to create a multiplatform marketing campaign—including web design, video shorts, ad materials, and appeal letters—to increase visibility and financial support. Other students have worked with community partners to expand awareness of services for the homeless, build consensus on public policy issues, and analyze the management and marketing strategies of local arts nonprofits.

A project-based approach to learning energizes our curriculum. Students in a class on innovation, for example, work in teams to develop and pitch ideas for viable new businesses, from an on-campus laundry service to a travel app that generates personalized vacation plans based on user input. A class on law and business challenges student teams to develop arguments on both sides of a recent court decision, presenting their cases to the rest of the class, which serves as an appellate court and renders a decision. Can a university dining club reject members based on gender? Does an image of an ice-cream truck in a video game infringe on the company’s trademark?

Undergraduate Research

Research sharpens skills that are highly prized in business—like presentation and communication—making it a valuable experience for any student, not just those considering graduate study. Students have conducted research on a wide range of topics, including piracy protection in the design industry, ethical issues in tobacco marketing and drug recalls, and differences in the privacy laws of the US and Europe.

Recent student-faculty research has even attracted notice from major corporations. One student’s independent research on consumers’ motivations for downloading mobile apps interested a major retail chain. Another student’s work on “slack-tivism”—the theory that brief social media interactions might dampen deeper, more meaningful engagement in social causes—has led to conversations with the philanthropy arm of a major health care firm.

Students who collaborate with faculty mentors have also published in scholarly journals and presented at regional and national conferences, building a network of professional connections.

Wide-Ranging Faculty Expertise

Our faculty members reflect the wide range of disciplines within marketing and interdisciplinary business, from psychologists who understand consumer behavior to lawyers who study ethics, business regulation, and public policy. These professors bring the academic insights of the scholar as well as professional experience in their fields to the classroom, tying theory to its practical application in the business world and beyond. They are also enthusiastic mentors to student researchers, whether their interest is an independent study or a student-faculty research collaboration.

Internships and Career Pathways

Nearly all of our students complete at least one internship before graduating, a testament to the wealth of opportunity in the region and the strong support of the department. Our students have landed internships in:

  • business (Calvin Klein, Johnson & Johnson, L’Oréal, Target, TerraCycle)
  • sports and entertainment (Madison Square Garden, New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, Trenton Thunder)
  • finance (Merrill Lynch, Sun National Bank)
  • media and communications (CBS Studios, NBCUniversal, Sirius XM)
  • government and nonprofit organizations (American Cancer Society, White House internship program)

Marketing students have access to the powerhouse advertising and creative centers of New York and Philadelphia, while interdisciplinary business students have unlimited options for pursuing internships that match their academic or career interests, in the city or in the major corporate corridor near campus.

With résumés reflecting a rigorous education and relevant experience, our recent graduates enjoy job-search success. Marketing graduates land positions in advertising, digital marketing, professional sales, and supply chain management, among other fields. Interdisciplinary business graduates work in business fields such as sales, finance, and management as well as other sectors, including law, government, public policy, and information technology. Read more about careers in marketing.

Students in both specializations pursue advanced degrees in law (Penn, Georgetown, Boston) and business (Drexel, Georgetown, Penn, Rutgers, Stern) and have gone on to graduate study in such disciplines as global business and strategy, global management, organizational dynamics, and organizational leadership.

Contact Information

Chair
John McCarty, PhD
609-771-3220
mccarty@tcnj.edu

Program Assistant
Quiana Starr
609-771-2566
starrq@tcnj.edu