Citibank and a USU class offer students credit advice
Students in a marketing research class are creating credit awareness on Utah State University’s campus through an internship opportunity from Citibank and its program management partner EdVenture Partners.
The students in USU’s business administration marketing research class, are marketing Citibank’s Credit Crusader campaign on campus. The class was divided into two competing groups to develop ideas for the campaign.
The students are developing plans to educate fellow students about credit and how to use it wisely, Peterson said. One of the tools they are using is the www.students.usecreditwisely.com Web site, hosted by Citibank, which has an overview, quizzes, tutorials and information about credit pitfalls.
The losing team eventually merged with the winning team and is now competing against other universities around the country, like University of Southern California and Texas A&M, Brian Peterson, USU’s team spokesman, said.
“The students in the program get to have an opportunity to apply their knowledge in a real campaign and become better educated. The rest of the student body through being introduced to the www.students.usecreditwisely.com campaign will also be better educated on how to avoid the problems that can arise from mismanaging one’s credit,” said JT Thomas, a student involved with the Web site component of the campaign.
The students are not only accountable to each other and their teacher on this project, but to Citibank as well, Stacey Hills, a member of the class, said.
“The students have real deadlines to meet. Everything they have learned about research, promotions and strategy has to be applied in a very short time frame,” Hills said.
“It’s great to get real life experience with designing a campaign instead of just reading about it in a textbook. We are able to target a group and have real physical interaction with a client,” Hillary Lange, a senior majoring in marketing, said.
At the end of the semester, the entire class will be able to this project on their resumes, Peterson said, indicating the work they did on the campaign on the semester-long internship experience they have acquired.
The group was chosen because of their knowledge about college-age concerns, he said.
“We were chosen because of our age group. We know what other college students want. The CEOs don’t understand very well what we want,” Peterson said.
During the three-week campaign, the marketing students will focus on educating other students about credit, bankruptcy, default and how to build credit now so they can get larger loans later on, Peterson said.
The Credit Crusader Campaign will be sponsoring several activities to publicize the Web site. The movie “Goonies” will be shown 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Kent Concert Hall. The movie is free and information on the campaign will be distributed with Red Bulls to movie-goers.
Students can also check out the Web site at kiosks in the TSC on Nov. 15, and will be awarded a free food for completing the quizzes online.
-joshcook@cc.usu.edu