WHY WEBER?

Mitch was born and bred in Ogden but grew up back East.  When his dad got job at Weber State University, Mitch and his family moved back to where his life began, Ogden Utah.  He is the oldest of four siblings and the first of them to go to college.  Upon his dad's advice to just start taking classes to see what he loved, Mitch enrolled at Weber State University and started taking a few classes.   

WHY MARKETING?

"I took a class from a political science teacher named Robert Hunter and he was amazing.  At the end of class one day I started to talk about what he does at the capital and he eventually took me down to the capitol and let me see what the legislature looked like. He introduced me to some people and I ended up stumbling into an internship with Senator Mike Lee. I was Senator Lee's first intern back east.  I flew back there and did a four month internship in D.C. and it was great!  When I finished that internship, I called Bob and said I don't know what I'm going to do and he said, 'You're going to come work with me at the United Way'".

While at the United Way, Mitch was getting heavily involved in doing marketing and development. "I loved development and the business school was always in the back of my mind but I wasn't sure how I was going to make it.  I was thinking communication, or sales and I started looking into the business school and took a few classes with my wife." It was professor Matt Mouritsen that was the first professor that made him realize, "Hey, there are quality professors at this school. Matt Mouritsen showed me that the professors really cared about where we were going and our futures and he cared about taking time out of class to help us get our thoughts together on what we were good at and where we wanted to be and Matt Mouritsen really got me to thinking the Goddard School has something to offer." After looking more into the business school based on his recommendation, Mitch decided that business marketing was his choice, "and that was a big step."

ACTIVITIES AT WEBER?

Mitch was approached by marketing professor Tony Allred to take a leadership position in the marketing club, "I was like, I have two kids, I work, I don't have time to go do club work.  But it was because he asked me and because I felt like, man I might learn something, I got involved and it was amazing.  I was the marketing club president for three years and it was just an awesome opportunity to get to know more students and I got the opportunity to get the AMA (American Marketing Association) certification." As the president of the club for three years, Mitch was able see a lot of growth and changes, "That was probably my favorite part was to get involved in other student's lives and make the Goddard School better

INCREDIBLE ACCESS

Mitch really enjoyed the small classes and the hand's on learning at the Goddard school, "I loved internet marketing.  Internet marketing was not what I was expecting. I got into the class thinking I was going to learn about Google Adwords and and just the basics of how to make a Facebook campaign work, but on the first day of class when Clinton (Amos) told us we were going to be doing a competition with Google and we were going to be forming teams and we were actually going to be competing in this competition, it really blew my mind. I had no idea we were going to have to do a real-world competition.  It was pretty exciting and pretty much the whole class.  Everything we learned in that class had to do with competition." 

As a father, husband, full time employee and student, Mitch did the most he could with the time he had, "What I did do was take advantage of the professors and how easy they were to talk to and get a hold of and I formed so many awesome relationships here with the professors at the Goddard School was Clinton Amos." 

"Dr. Amos was amazing, he would take so much time to talk to us after class and talk to us about real world situations and where you are going to go in marketing and about his past and his experience with marketing and he did it in a way that was inviting and made it so you wanted to go and ask more questions."

ADVICE

"Make sure you have a book that is in your bag that is one your going to take notes of things you are never going to want to forget.  You are going to learn so many things that are like 'ok, I need to remember that' and it happens all the time and if you don't remind yourself in 15 seconds you are going to forget it, so write it down and have that special book just for keeping those notes because those things will happen throughout your entire school experience."

Mitch also recommends getting prepared: "You never can get prepared enough for a semester at the Goddard School of business in my option.  One of the things that I was concerned with was time, money, energy... like how am I going to make the time to do all of this.  The more time and energy you put into the planning before the semester, the better you will do.  Even with the long term stuff, sit down with the career counselors and think where am I going to be in three to four months, where am I going to be in a year and what do I have to do to get there. I didn't do that soon enough."

WHERE IS HE NOW?

Mitch is still working in marketing at the United Way as he has throughout his college career and is now utilizing all of the great technical and hands-on knowledge and experience he's gained to better his job.