Vatican Journalist Joan Lewis visits AUR Marketing class

MKT 303 summer students present Joan Lewis with an AUR “hoodie.”

30 June 2009: EWTN journalist Joan Lewis was a guest in the “Special Topics in Marketing and Organizational Communications” class. During the month-long course students explored, under the guidance of Prof. Kathleen Fitzsimmons, an array of marketing communications tools, with practitioners who came to class to share their experience and answer questions. Discussing press relations, Ms. Lewis regaled the students with stories of her four decades in the media, principally reporting on the Vatican. She is currently Rome Bureau Chief of Eternal Word Television Network and writes a daily blog on issues related to the Vatican and the Church in general. Ms. Lewis said she was impressed with the quality of questions from the students, which focused on issues ranging from how the Vatican deals with bad press and crises, to how Joan prepared for a career in journalism, to differences in the styles of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XIV, to how the Church is utilizing the new forms of communication such as Facebook and Twitter, to a request for recipe for the chocolate chip cookies Joan baked for Pope John Paul II (Answer: “It’s on the Nestle chocolate chip bag!”). Indeed, Ms. Lewis was impressed enough with the questions that she even recorded the students asking them, for her weekend radio show. She also featured the class on two of her blogs.

The MKT 303 Special Topics course was originally created by Dr. Marlene Fine, Professor of Communication at Simmons College, who taught it at AUR for eight summers as a visiting professor. The course provides an overview of cultural, marketing and communication issues as applied in Italy, and brings an array of experts in to talk with the students about various issues: branding, advertising, pr, sales, economics, diplomacy, press relations, entrepreneurship and management. Through discussion, research, a field trip and the course project, students have ample opportunity to hone their skills at analysing cultural differences as well as communicating and managing relationships across cultures.