I think everybody who knows me is aware that I have been working on a new degree program at UW-Stout.  The last 4 years have been spent building curriculum to address the needs that our industry partners have identified as needed in their workforce, but which were not being provided in college programs.  The last 15 months have been spent in meetings and negotiations, researching and building.

Now I am at the stage where their is only one group left to address, and that is the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents.  We have requested that the degree program be on the June agenda.  If they approve it there, then we will have our new program for enrollment in Fall 2015.

So why I have I chosen to speak about this in relationship to the image of the first seedling poking up from a tray of seeds?  Well, someone always has to be first.  And once that first one is up, many others are sure to follow.

The program I have been working on is a Bachelor of Science in Digital Marketing Technology.  Go ahead and Google that, and see what you come back with.  Go on, I will wait.

…

What did you find?  Information on degrees in digital marketing is about as close as you will come.  But if you look at what I said the name of or degree is, you will find that there are no others with Marketing Technology degrees.  You won’t even find ours yet, because just like that seedling, we have just popped our head up out of the soil and when we look around, there are no others there.

The thing that makes us different is the focus on the technology.  This is a technology degree, and it happens to be that the technology of focus is digital marketing technology.  That is what sets up apart from the field, that is what makes us first, that is what makes me think of the seedling in the picture.

The other thing you might have noticed is that (if you Googled it before April 1, 2015), that the first result, the paid ad at the top of the Google results is the the MarTech 15 San Francisco Conference.  This is the second MarTech Conference, and the second one I will be attending.

The last time I went saying we were planning a degree (In Boston last August).  This time I am going saying we are one step away from a degree, and by the way, send us some students.  The degree will be offered completely online for at least the next two years, then we will try to bring it on campus.

The demand for students with this kind of education is huge, and there are no other schools in the pipeline that have this as a focus.  This is about to get interesting.

If you know any students that would like to get in the ground level of a whole new world of high demand technology skills, have them send me an email at tharpk@uwstout.edu.

PEACE!

KT