UM's high-tech guru Jakki Mohr honored

Jakki Mohr’s dynamic teaching style has been recognized with many accolades at UM. Now she can claim an award from an international education group.

Mohr received the award – for Innovative Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Technology — from the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning at the International Conference on College Teaching and Learning held recently in Jacksonville, Fla.

Well-known at UM for her up-to-the-minute classes in high-tech marketing, Mohr has been named UM’s Most Inspirational Teacher and Distinguished Scholar of the Year. In 2005 she was named the Montana Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. She is the author of “Marketing of High-Technology Products and Innovations,” the only textbook published on the subject.

Mohr gave a presentation at the conference using technology from the high-tech marketing class that she teaches at the UM School of Business. The class addresses the issues related to high-tech products and services that require an approach often far different from standard marketing.

An example of how Mohr’s approach is being used by students is a hands-on project undertaken last semester. Vann’s, a Montana company headquartered in Missoula, also operates Vanns.com, one of the largest online marketing sites in the country, selling appliances and electronics over the Internet.

Mohr said George Manlove of Vanns.com approached her, asking if students from her class could consult with him and others at the company to help them target young people.
Four students were assigned to the project. Mohr explained that hands-on learning is stressed in her class, as well as in most business school classes.

The four students assigned to help Vanns.com researched ads run on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. One of their conclusions was that Vanns.com needed to change its product line to include lower-cost products that would be more affordable to younger people.

Manlove was pleased and offered to hire all four of the students in paid internships. Three of the four accepted. Mohr noted that, unlike the experience with Vanns.com, some projects don’t work out. “Sometimes it’s a dismal failure,” she said.

However, more companies request student research and assistance through her class than she is able to accommodate, so it’s clear she and her students are finding success more often than failure.