Welcome to the Graduate Class of 2010 Medill IMC Northwestern

As a member of the faculty, I have been welcoming you and your peers since 1989. My reason for coming to Northwestern was to build the new IMC program with my senior colleagues Martin Block, Ted Spiegel, Don Schultz and Paul Wang. Other faculty who are retired still advise us including Emeritus Professor Ray Ewing. Ray thankfully thought that I would be a good addition to Medill with my recent joint doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in both Business and in Mass Communications (PR and Advertising). Having taught marketing communications in schools of business, I was anxious to show students and business leaders that a program in marcom rather than only a single course would be of great value to them.

It is still our goal with new full-time faculty including senior faculty Frank Mulhern, Ed Malthouse,n to educate and train each class of this successful program that Kalyan Rama will allow you to lead in businesses and other organizations with your knowledge and skills in strategic communications. I will talk about our next generation, extremely gifted junior faculty in a forthcoming blog. No MBA candidate in the current class of 110,000 for 2010 or in past classes will have as much knowledge of business and strategic communications. No MBA will have as much knowledge of both customer purchase behavior databases and stakeholder databases of quotes, comments and promises as you will have in the next 15 months and 25 years.

I suggest that you consider some resources as part of your weekly personal assignment. And, I suggest that you write to as many of your colleagues from work, your classmates, family and friends in business to tell them where you are, what you are doing and when you will graduate. Share websites,articles, lecture notes or quotes with them over the next 15 months so they can help you handle the stress of graduate school and find job opportunities for you.

1. Consider the reading room in Medill for old fashioned "ink on paper" newspapers but use our IMC reading room, the computer station there or your laptop for current trade publications in IMC including public relations, advertising, direct marketing, interactive marketing, marketing and more.
2. Use the wwww.prsa.org website for professional activities and job advice
3. Monitor this blog site IMCProf for IMC insights or Twitter "IMCProf" for more of my comments on IMC and life.
4. Sign-up today on www.linkedin.com and the IMC community on that site to maximize job and internship opportunities.
5. Read www.culprit.com, and www.edelman.com/speak_up/blog/ for top notch comments on the state of marcom and PR.
6. Go to www.awpagesociety.com, www.prsa.org, http://www.instituteforpr.org/, http://www.prfirms.org/, http://www.iabc.com/, http://www.prsa.org/JobCenter, http://www.prquickstart.org/, http://www.vss.com/ more to come
7. Watch the development of the new Integrated Marketing Communications Association (you are automatically members) by following their first summit on IMC and Branding at www.GBSconference.com
8. Consider reading the books of your faculty on display in the glass case of IMC. We are a prolific faculty worth reading.
9. Work to create an IMC social action program (volunteers) to help others around the world while you are here. Take a look at www.aidmatrix.org as a possibility.
10. Sign-up for the Journal of Integrated Marketing Communications. It is the most successful, longest running independent IMC student program involving the greatest number of students. Be sure to attend the 2010 JIMC "launch" this Fall.

Welcome to Northwestern University, Medill and IMC. More to come.