Marketing students in the Katz School of Business have a new space to build the skills they may be asked to use throughout their careers.
The MINT Lab, short for Marketing, Innovation, and Technology, brings together tools for video and audio production, photography, editing, artificial intelligence, and digital content creation.
The goal is to give students hands-on experience creating the kinds of content they may one day produce for an employer or client.
That breadth matters, said Cristián Sepúlveda, associate professor of marketing. Many graduates will work in roles where marketing responsibilities stretch from writing a post to taking a photo, editing video, and developing the right caption.
“They need a little bit of everything,” Sepúlveda said. “We need to prepare our students to be able to run the complete show. They’re going to need the ability to do everything from writing the post, to taking the pictures, and getting the captions right.”
Students are already beginning to use the lab.
In Sepúlveda’s Social Media Marketing course, students will use Adobe Premiere to create videos telling the story of a favorite place on campus, combining technical skills with visual storytelling.
The lab currently gives students and faculty access to professional-grade microphones and lighting, a high-powered video editing station, and sound-absorbing panels designed for video and audio recording.
“A generous donor believed in our marketing program and wanted to create new opportunities for students,” said Liz Cartier, dean of the Katz School of Business. “Our faculty turned that support into a space where students can gain hands-on experience with the tools they will encounter in their careers.”
Sepúlveda hopes that experience gives students confidence when they encounter those same skills in a job description. “That is important for us because part of the mission of the School of Business is to have career-ready students,” he said. “For me, a win will be a job posting that says, ‘We need students who are versatile in Photoshop and video editing software,’ and they say, ‘Yes, I can do it.’”