Classroom Social

by Ela Schwartz

Enroll in Social Media and one thing you won’t hear Adjunct Professor Mark Fogel, M.P.S. ’85, tell you is to power off your smartphone or tablet. That’s because Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogging and all things online are a part of his course curriculum. The class was introduced in Spring 2013 and is scheduled to return in Spring 2014.

But forget about watching cute cat videos or updating your relationship status—this course teaches how social media has permeated all aspects of the business world and how future executives can utilize this vital tool.

“Social media is no longer just something fun to do; it’s built into the [millennial] generation’s everyday lives,” said Mr. Fogel, who was awarded the Part-Time Faculty Teaching Excellence Award in 2013. “If you’re a finance major, you can learn how to apply your skills to data analytics. Marketing majors can use it to build campaigns. [Human resources] departments use social media for recruiting and employment branding, and risk management needs to understand the legalities involved in a business’s social media policy and online presence.”

Appropriately, the class is social in nature. Mr. Fogel has students break into teams to create and populate blogs with written, video and audio content, and then they are tasked to utilize RSS and Twitter feeds and analyze data on the back end.

Mr. Fogel is not a social media expert per se—he is a seasoned HR professional who is currently chief human resources officer at the Marcum Group, the same firm Adelphi named 2013 Employer of the Year. But “I have strong ties in the social media community,” he said, which he has taken advantage of by bringing guest speakers from the worlds of advertising and marketing into the classroom, including an expert on Twitter who did what Mr. Fogel described as a “jaw-dropping presentation” on the possibilities of the platform.

Mr. Fogel’s enthusiasm for being part of the ever-evolving world of social media is palpable when he said he’d rank teaching the class equal to setting foot in Beijing for the first time.  As he summed it up: “It’s a very cool class.”