Welcome to a new semester of AMA! We are so excited to reunite with returning members and welcome new faces into UMD AMA. To kick this off this fall, we felt it was important to educate our members on how to make the most of their AMA student membership. On October 4th, we were joined with Luis Sierra, Director of Collegiate Communities for a leadership workshop on how to elevate your AMA membership experience!
To start things off with a collaboration exercise, Luis split members up into six teams to play the activity “Lost at Sea.” Imagine your team is in the middle of the ocean and your boat is sinking. What are the most essential items you need? Given a list of 15 items, each team member ranked the items in order of importance individually, then had to discuss with their team and reach a consensus. Would you rather have a shaving mirror or a map of the Atlantic? Mosquito netting or a rope? Once a unanimous ranking was reached, Luis revealed the correct rankings as decided by the U.S. Coast Guard. Needless to say, we were all relieved this was not a real life scenario.
Each member then compared how they scored individually versus as a team. Most members had a higher team score, revealing that collaboration and teamwork often leads to a mutually beneficial outcome. Yet some members had higher individual scores because they began to doubt themselves once the team discussion began. Overall, the main takeaway of this exercise is that teamwork adds value but each member should still stay true to their core values.
With the team building exercise behind us, Luis moved on to speaking about AMA. AMA’s mission is to be an essential community for marketers. The three communities that make up AMA are collegiate, professional, and academic. The collegiate community has about 9,000 members across 326 chapters and provides opportunities for scholarships, case competitions, and mentorship programs. Roughly 11,000 members throughout 70 chapters make up the professional community, which offers certifications, marketing news, and the AMA Daily newsletter. Be sure to take advantage of your free one-year professional membership after you graduate! Lastly, the academic community has 2,500 members and houses academic marketing journals that are useful research resources.
Being a member of AMA means you have access to learning products including on-demand videos, synchronous training, tools and templates, market research, and certifications to boost your resume! As a student, you can also apply for AMA scholarships and grants such as the Marketing Scholar Award, the Diversity Leadership Scholarship and the Social Impact Scholarship. AMA also hosts the International Collegiate Conference (ICC) each spring in New Orleans in order to build a community among students and faculty and create spaces for competitions, networking, and learning from industry professionals. Last year our exec board members Nick, Sarah, and Luca attended and had a blast! AMA also sponsors regional conferences like the one UMD AMA is hosting on November 11th 2022 so be sure to attend!
As you can see, AMA offers a range of benefits and opportunities to its members to learn, network, and put their marketing skills to use in a real-life setting. Thank you to Luis Sierra for taking the time to visit our campus and show us all the AMAzing opportunities AMA has to offer! Visit ama.org to get more information about member perks and upcoming events.
- Rumi Petrova