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Spotlight
facilities in the country—the Harold Zeigler Interactive Sales Lab. In addition, students take a sales management course, covering topics vital to understanding what it takes to become an excellent sales force manager. And to further boost their own education, most sales students participate in the Sales and Business Marketing Association, making it the largest student organization in the college with well over 100 members and one of the most active organizations on campus. The SBMA hosts 25 employers each semester at weekly meetings. To top it off, sales students are encouraged by faculty to think globally, and they participate in study abroad in large numbers
as another way to understand the global perspective of business. In fact, sales majors represent a large portion of business students studying abroad. Both Newell and Eckert have taken students on study abroad trips. Eckert regularly leads one of the most popular short-term study abroad programs to the University of Paderborn, Germany, where WMU students interact with German university students to learn global business negotiating skills. This combination of excellent students, faculty, curriculum, facilities and extracurricular opportunities form the strong foundation on which the SBM major has prospered and become one of the premier sales programs in the country.
This past year, Greta Lorr from Jackson, Mich., and Aleks Jogerst from Vicksburg, Mich., took second place in this year’s National Sales Challenge staged by the Russ Berrie Institute for Professional Sales. Lorr won the speed selling portion of an individual event during the competition.
Student Named a Richter Scholar Hanna Downs of Novi, Mich., was among 10 students from across the country selected to receive a prestigious nationwide business scholarship awarded by the Richter Foundation and the Institute for Supply Management’s Richter Scholarship Fund. The Richter scholarship includes tuition assistance of up to $5,000, pairing with established executives and a former Richter Scholar who will serve as mentors, attendance at a national supply management conference and other benefits. Now in its tenth year, the Richter Scholarship Program is the largest nationally recognized scholarship program for supply chain management students. Downs is WMU’s sixth scholarship recipient in the past ten years, placing WMU fourth in the nation for the total number of students honored with Richter Scholarships in the past 10 years. The program identifies future supply chain management leaders and helps fasttrack these students into the field. “Winning this scholarship is such a great honor, and I am so grateful for this opportunity,” says Downs. “I’m excited
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to represent Western Michigan University at the conference. It is going to be a great opportunity for me to expand my professional network and mentor base. My professors here at Western have provided me with the knowledge, skills and training I need to make a good impression at the conference and show why Western is such an outstanding institution.” Downs is majoring in both integrated supply management and food and consumer package goods marketing and serves as an integrated supply management student mentor where she aids students in applying for the program and developing their portfolio of professional activities and promotes the ISM curriculum and study abroad with the program’s students. “Hanna blew everybody’s socks off!” says Nancy Richter, president of the Richter Foundation. Downs spent a semester at Hogeschool Utrecht in the Netherlands, igniting a passion for study abroad and international business. While in the Netherlands, she was selected to be a part of a five-member
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Hanna blew everybody’s socks off!
– Nancy Richter
Photo: John Lacko
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I’m excited to represent
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WMU at the conference.
– Hanna Downs
leadership team that led 45 multicultural students in developing and presenting an export market entry strategic plan for De Wiltfang, an integrated Dutch gardening retailer. Downs serves as vice president of membership in the student chapter of APICS, the Association for Operations Management and vice president of social events for the Food Marketing Association.
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