Program Structure

The Business Honors Program is an opportunity for Marketing & Business Analytics (MKTBA) students to synthesize the learning from their major/concentration to tackle real-world projects with one of our Business Honors Program client partners. Participating client organizations will sponsor a team of capable and motivated MKTBA students to work on a collaboratively defined strategic project which will have measurable outcomes and deliverables. Students will be given the autonomy to define the roadmap, timeline, and milestones for achieving agreed-upon goals. At the conclusion of the semester, student teams will present their findings and recommendations to the leadership team from the sponsoring organization.

The honors practicum provides students with a unique opportunity to apply their skills to real-world projects in real-world work settings. The course meets once per week, on Monday evenings, from 6:00 pm – 8:45 pm. Each class session is divided into roughly three sections, team check-ins, peer-teaching workshops, and industry speakers.

Students work in teams directly with liaisons at their designated organization to come up with innovative programs and plans, mapping out solutions that will ultimately be implemented and maintained by the client organization. Students will have an opportunity to check-in during class; teams will also set additional meetings to work with each other and client liaisons during the week. Students are expected to dedicate approximately 10 hours per week to the Sbona Honors Program.

Our innovative peer-teaching model elevates the learning experience of both hard skills and soft skills through the course: students develop their technical know-how while simultaneously polishing important presentation and facilitation skillsets that are critical to success and advancement in the professional workplace. Students are put in different teams from their client project teams in order to encourage further networking and relationship development. Each peer-instruction team identifies a relevant topic related to technical know-how or career development, and then design and deliver a highly interactive workshop to their classmates.

We have found that the peer-teaching approach increases networking, engagement, and retention of material, while fostering student creativity and professional development. Recent topics include:

• Alumni networking
• Asana: Work management, simplified
• Balsamiq for wireframing
• Canva and effective design principles
• Career path exploration via Myers-Briggs
• Creating effective elevator pitches
• Dealing with difficult work situations
• Effective email marketing
• Forming, storming, norming & performing: the FSNP framework
• Google analytics
• How to ace your interview
• Unconscious bias in the workplace
• Leadership styles
• LinkedIn networking
• Public speaking
• Writing standout cover letters

Each semester, students across the Business Honors Program meet and learn from the wisdom and experiences of a wide variety of respected industry professionals who speak on a wide variety of topics, including project management, ethical leadership, understanding the metaverse, leading with a JEDI (justice, equity, diversity, inclusion) mindset, the power of persuasion, why marketing is everything for entrepreneurial businesses, and much, much more.

One of our most recent sessions featured Silicon Valley entrepreneur Rahim Fazal’s talk entitled: Building A Successful Career in Tech—No Coding Required (aka How Getting Fired From McDonald's Changed My Life).