Teaching

In the spring, 2023 semester, I will begin teaching a Marketing and Society PhD seminar to doctoral students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. 


In the fall, 2022 semester, I began teaching Nonprofit Marketing to undergraduate students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.


Between 2019 and 2021, as a PhD student, I taught five sessions of Consumer Behavior, one session of Introduction to Marketing, and one session of Marketing Data Analytics in face-to-face and remote formats to class sizes that ranged from 21 to 240 students.


NONPROFIT MARKETING: MKTG 491N 

This course is designed to introduce students to both the theory and the practice of nonprofit marketing. As a result, students will be introduced to philanthropy and the communication, marketing, and fundraising practices of nonprofit organizations. Early semester work will include a survey of the historical and political context in which the nonprofit sector emerged and its crucial role in shaping American society. Building on this knowledge, the course will explore the communication strategies modern nonprofits use to mobilize supporters, change public opinion, and advance long-term solutions to the problems they seek to address.


CONSUMER BEHAVIOR: MKTG 3553 

The goal of this course is to enhance your understanding of consumer behavior. By the end of the course, you will be knowledgeable about consumer psychology—you will understand how to meet customers’ needs, and how and why consumers make purchasing decisions. During this process, you will come to better understand yourself as a target of marketing influence. You will also appreciate how an understanding of consumer psychology can be used to develop powerful marketing techniques and tactics. Additionally, we are going to talk about race. It will not merely be a block within the schedule, rather it will be submerged in various topics throughout the semester and will be a critical component of your semester long project.


MARKETING DATA ANALYTICS: WCOB 1033

The broad objective of this course is to help you develop as critical thinkers and systematic problem solvers. The main job of managers is to make decisions, and to do this effectively you need critical thinking skills. In practical terms, this means that you need to learn to solve real-world problems by accurately framing them in terms of independent and dependent variables, formulating hypotheses about those variables, using statistics to test hypotheses, and interpreting the results. In short, I hope to instill in you an appreciation for the role of data in managerial problem solving by knowing both how to produce it (i.e., research design) and how to display and analyze it (i.e., statistics). The only way to learn critical thinking skills is by practicing them, so we will use a hands-on approach using Excel and a focus on applied business problems.


"Professor Johnson was one of the most engaging, enthusiastic, knowledgeable professors I have ever had. She is very passionate about what she is teaching and is ALWAYS willing to meet with us for anything we might need. I can't express enough my appreciation for her always valuing our feedback and making sure we understand what she is teaching. I have never had a professor as willing to always meet with her students as Professor Johnson is. It has truly shaped the positive experience I have had with this class and the positive outcome." - Fall 2020

"Mrs. Johnson has become in my eyes one of the most dedicated and passionate professors I have had in college. She goes above and beyond to teach her students in more engaging ways then I would say most do, while also being a graduate student herself. She personally took time out her schedule to meet with me to discuss any issues I had and questions I could have had, showing she cares about her students and what she can provide to help those in need. I would recommend to anyone who is looking for a teacher who will push them to succeed past their own limits to take her class, as it would never be a regret. Her lectures are engaging, her projects are more than beneficial and her empathy for student life and understanding is amazing. I hope the best for her and her professional career, as she's shown time and time again to me that she deserves exactly what she is putting into the program." - Spring 2020


PHILOSOPHY

Goals: I want my students to cultivate critical thinking skills and information search methods, which I found valuable in my own professional career, so they feel confident in their professional careers. Specifically, I want my students to feel ready to contribute in meetings, projects, and daily work activities, and to feel their contributions are both meaningful and impactful because they have thought through agenda action items and the implications of desired changes or project outcomes. I also want my students to get excited about tackling problems and joining teams to work on projects. Lastly, I want to foster class discussions, collaborative learning, and personal reflection so my students understand and value both the benefits and challenges of collaborating and working with others, and taking time to pause and reflect on lessons learned.

 

Beliefs: It is my belief that to learn, students must be actively engaged with the material. Simply put, students must do something. Additionally, I believe that if you provide students with content that is relevant and applicable to their current lives, they will be engaged both in and outside of the classroom.

 

Approach: Considering such goals and beliefs, I like to think of secondary education as an exploratory residency where students balance learning with doing to gain a better understanding of their capabilities while developing career aspirations that align not only with their professional, but also personal interests, as well as skills that they can use for years to come.


Ultimately, I want my students to feel capable and empowered to contribute to the firms they choose to work for right from day one. Grades in my class are reflective of both lessons learned as well as effort executed to meet class objectives. Those who excel do so because they are ready to reach their potential in the non-academic world.  



"Alicia is a great teacher and is extremely passionate about what she does and tries her best to make relevant course work and other materials to help us understand clearer. She has given a lot of real world advice about consumerism and financial decisions that I will take with me throughout my lifetime! Great teacher" - Spring 2020

"Professor Johnson is very dedicated to helping my classmates and I not only succeed but also understand the information. I have never felt intimidated to ask her any questions and she's always offering ways to reach out and help. Especially during our online class... she offered to meet with me one-on-one through CourseEval to assist. She's a deserving teacher and I genuinely enjoyed this class because I had a great professor leading it." - Spring 2020

"I really enjoyed her class and she is a great teacher! Also, I loved the group project, I liked that we were able to apply principles we learned in class to the real world. Also, I enjoyed that she took time to teach us about financial decision making." - Fall 2020

 

"I really enjoyed this class overall, it was very well taught. Even with the current circumstances we are in at the moment, being online, I still felt like I was learning the topics and felt like there was engagement within the classroom." - Fall 2020

 

"I really enjoyed this class and although it was challenging I think it was very useful information. I feel like I got a lot out of taking this class and will use my knowledge of consumer behavior in the future." Fall 2020