Strategic Communication
& Professional Positioning
These three projects demonstrate how research, strategic planning, and continuous learning inform stronger communication decisions and how those insights translate into practice. Together, they trace the full life of an idea: a strategic plan that applies the IMC planning process to my own professional brand, an original mixed-methods study of gamification in higher-education marketing, and the live curriculum that research helped shape in my classroom.
Personal IMC Strategic Plan & SWOT Analysis
What happens when a strategist turns the planning process on her own brand? This plan applies the complete IMC planning cycle which includes a situation analysis, SWOT, audience segmentation, positioning, and measurable objectives to a real professional repositioning challenge. It also serves as the strategic blueprint for this portfolio.
What it teaches: Strategy is most honest when you are willing to apply it to yourself first.
The next two projects represent one continuous thread: an original research question developed through graduate study, tested through mixed-methods research, and translated into an evolving classroom framework. Together, they show how scholarship informs practice and how practice generates new questions for future research.
Original Research — Gamification in Higher-Education Marketing
This original research project was carried out from proposal through completion across COM 500 and COM 502. The small-scale exploratory mixed-methods study of gamification in higher-education marketing drew on two Qualtrics surveys with 45 participants, including 36 students and nine faculty or staff members, and examined how gamification may influence engagement, institutional identity, brand loyalty and advocacy in higher education.
Grounded in Self-Determination Theory, Flow Theory, and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, the findings suggest that meaningful motivation, community, relevance, and ease of use matter more than novelty or rewards alone. All results are reported in aggregate.
What it teaches: Motivation, not technology, drives engagement and the strongest research questions often begin with real problems in practice.
The Living Brand Lab: From Research to Classroom Practice
A four-phase strategic communication teaching case study
One of the greatest joys of teaching is watching research come to life. This Living Brand Lab case study documents how my graduate research moved beyond the page to inform an immersive, semester-long learning sequence in COM 240: Strategic Communication at William Peace University.
Across four connected phases, students examined WPU’s 2025 rebrand as a living case by auditing brand expression in the campus environment, analyzing the strategy through established IMC frameworks, engaging directly with university marketing leadership, and applying those lessons to their own professional identities. The case study is presented without identifying individual students.
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The Living Brand Lab case study remains an evolving instructional framework rather than a fixed assignment package. The Fall 2025 research and classroom experience helped clarify which activities created meaningful connections among institutional identity, strategic communication, and students’ professional goals. Future iterations will place even greater emphasis on guided reflection, accessibility, ease of participation, and the distinction between purposeful gamification and competition for its own sake.
This continuous cycle, which combines research, application, reflection, and revision, is the clearest expression of how I understand the scholar-practitioner role.
What it teaches: Research comes to life when learners experience it firsthand in communication.
Research & Scholarship in Action
An original research project carried out from proposal through reporting and application.
