Converse’s ‘Creating Your Brand’ Class Zooms into the Middle East
At 4:30 one way-too-early February morning, Converse College’s “Creating Your Brand” class wound up in the Middle East — virtually, anyway.
John Jeter, adjunct professor in Converse’s Music Business & Technology program, Zoomed a one-hour session with about 40 students in Northwestern University’s journalism and media program in Qatar; a total of some 300 students attend NU-Q, as it’s called.
Jeter’s longtime mentor, NU-Q’s Associate Professor in Residence Mary Dedinsky, who is also Director of the Journalism and Strategic Communication Program there, arranged the one-time class for students who clicked in from all over the world.
“Branding and networking are crucial to landing a good internship or job.”
“John had told me about his class, and I thought it would be extremely informative, valuable and exciting for the students to work interactively with him to learn about how they present themselves when seeking a job,” Dedinsky says.
“Branding and networking are crucial to landing a good internship or job,” she says, “and Jeter’s conversational, fun and provocative style taught them brilliantly how to learn about their strengths and how to focus on them.”
A veteran of Chicago newspapers who was the first female managing editor of a major metropolitan newspaper, she hired Jeter in the mid-1980s. For NU-Q, Converse’s ATM 255, which is offered during JanTerm and spans 36 hours, the global Zoom ran just one hour.
“It’s been a while since I’ve attended a lecture that actually made me self-reflect,” says Muhammad Abdullah Imran Tahir, a 20-year-old sophomore studying journalism and strategic communications. “What resonated with me the most was the idea of thinking about myself as a company; what does my brand image represent.”
From a room in the jaw-dropping NU-Q campus in Qatar’s sprawling University City, Tahir, who hails from Lahore, Pakistan, added: “As students, we’re all very tired of Zoom meetings that are just a one-sided flow of information. This interactive and informative session was a breath of fresh air.”