Life & Styles A Day in the Life: Marketing professor cultivates students’ ideas to improve digital marketing for clients

By SUNAINA KABADKAR Senior Editor

Timothy Marshall, director of the Digital Marketing Center and assistant professor of marketing, welcomes students from all majors to the DMC, a full-service digital marketing agency located on the BW campus and staffed by students.

Marshall graduated with an undergraduate degree in public relations, communications and journalism before pursuing a master’s degree in integrated marketing. After completing his master’s degree, Marshall managed and supervised marketing teams, including interns and graduate students.

“When brands started to lean more toward digital or integrated digital more into their marketing plans, I became involved in that and, at some point maybe about 10 years after graduating from undergrad, … [I] took on leadership roles,” Marshall said.

Before coming to teach at BW, Marshall worked in marketing as a consultant and trainer.

“I would talk to the C-suite (the executive level managers in a company) and explain why digital would be important to connect with different audiences, how it works and what we would need in order to really get to a place where the brand can communicate effectively,” Marshall said.

Marshall said he had the chance to be brought onto staff after he could guest lecture in some courses, which led to working with Julie Miller, an associate professor of public relations in the Department of Communication Arts & Sciences.

After three years of mostly consulting and teaching one class on campus, Marshall said he took the opportunity to “flip my life around” and became an educator full time while “consulting on the side.”

The DMC has changed since 2016 to provide a wider access of student opportunities. Marshall said the DMC currently caters to many businesses in the Berea area. Since the content the DMC deals with is mostly digital, it also takes on clients that could be from anywhere across the country.

In some cases, the students at the DMC will handle everything for a client, but other times they might work with other marketing firms and specialize in a specific task, Marshall said. He added that the DMC deals with single and repeat clients, and even competes against other marketing agencies.

The main service the DMC offers is consulting on a client’s project. When a client hires the DMC for this service, a team of three to five students is formed from the 20 to 25 students that the DMC usually employs.

Read a longer version of this feature story online at bwexponent.com/marshall.

By SIMON SKOUTAS & KELLY COYNE

On St. Patrick's Day, Front Porch, a folk music string band including various BW professors, provided entertainment at the local bar Front St Social.

The professors usually involved in Front Porch are political science professor Mark Mattern, philosophy professor Kelly Coble, a former professor of German Steve Hollender and the Interim Associate Dean of the Conservatory of Music Beth Hiser. For St. Patrick’s Day, Hiser could not attend, and instead, Leon Kratz, a Celtic fiddle player, joined them.

While Front Porch has played at Front St Social in the past, Mattern said they were specifically asked to play for St. Patrick’s Day. They invited Leon Kratz, a renowned Celtic fiddle player and Mattern’s son to join them.

“The owner of Front Street Social may have thought that because we do some Irish adjacent music that we can easily come in and do a whole bunch of Irish music, which we don’t,” Mattern said. “But we resolved that problem since Beth, our bass player, is unable to make the gig, so what we’ve done is invited an Irish fiddler who’s quite good to sit in with us.”

Mattern said that Front Porch, who usually rehearses together weekly, learned around 45 minutes of new material just for St. Patrick’s Day.

In an interview with The Exponent before their performance, Coble said that for Irish music, the members were mostly playing accompaniment with the fiddle.

“The Irish stuff is a pretty straightforward style of music, but there’s a real art to it if you really want to dive into it,” Coble said. “We’re pretty much just doing straightforward accompaniment, so the real highlight is going to be the fiddle,”

The four professors in Front Porch have been playing music together for about 15 years. However, Coble said that the group originally started with just Mattern and

Hollender. Then, despite having a different musical background, Coble joined them a few months later after hearing some of their music.

“I had experience playing electric lead guitar in metal bands,” Coble said. “At first I wasn’t sure what to make of the folk music, but Steve and Mark sounded amazing together, and that inspired me to learn the songs they were playing and listen to music in that genre. Now I love the stuff!”

Coble said that when he joined, Hiser was not yet working at BW, but as she has a high degree of music knowledge and skill, she added in her voice, bass guitar and her fiddle playing.

Mattern said that Front Porch did not advertise the event much themselves other than through their email list. Still, there was a large local showing which included some BW students.

Coble said that they enjoy when students and alumni come out to their gigs.

“We always like it when students come in and have a good time,” Coble said. “And some students are also musicians.”

By CHASE J. GILROY Staff Writer

Seasonal Affective Disorder is a mental disorder that causes many individuals' mood and overall mental health to be negatively impacted over the fall and winter months.

Compounded in part by Northeast Ohio’s infamous weather, Baldwin Wallace students are not immune to the effects of SAD.

Kayela Swansiger, a junior psychology major, shared her experiences with SAD and how it affects her bipolar disorder.

“The weather outside can potentially trigger manic episodes in me as result of the comorbidity of seasonal affective disorder and bipolar disorder. Even just going outside and seeing that it is not so [nice] out, does not make one feel so pretty on the inside,” Swansiger said.

Timothy Hall, a therapist that works with Timely Care at Baldwin Wallace University, said it can be difficult to tell who all is suffering from stress and changes to their affect due to SAD because of all the other stressors happening to students in their daily lives.

“Here in Cleveland, you're going to see a good bit of mood disturbance on account of the weather and the seasonal patterns just because the weather can get so glum during the winter months,” Hall said. “It certainly doesn't help anything.”

However, Hall said it is difficult to determine how common SAD is among BW students.

“You know, I don't know that we can discern that really because of the context of the academic year in which we work,” Hall said. “There's this ebb and flow of the stress of the academic year. With new semesters, new classes, midterms, finals, adjustment to campus, adjustment back home, there are so many variables that impact mental health for students on campus, but the seasonal pattern is certainly one of them.”

According to Evelyn Campbell, a licensed clinical social worker and therapist from Pennsylvania, SAD is widely attributed to a lack of sunlight. Specifically, it is the reduced level of sunlight that disrupts the body’s circadian rhythm.

Campbell compared SAD to a depression, in which people become sad for periods of time, often lose interest in various activities, develop a tendency to eat more, have difficulty concentrating and have lower energies causing them to sometimes sleep too much.

Nevertheless, Swansiger said she has found a way to cope with SAD in those days.

“Light therapy has probably been the most beneficial for me, especially since Cleveland is very gray,” Swansiger said.