March 2024
Colleen McClure is a 2015 SVSU graduate in management and marketing who is now a professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham with her Ph.D. in marketing. She loves teaching her classes and interacting with students while also being able to conduct research and "nerd out" with fellow professors about their given fields.
Life at SVSU
Colleen chose to attend SVSU because of the location, small class sizes, and her earning the Presidential Scholarship. She double majored in Marketing and Management. She got involved in undergraduate research and was even able to present her research at a conference; this research would go on to get published as well! This experience was the initial inspiration for Colleen's PhD. Colleen liked the different teaching approaches that each professor used, and one of her favorite things about SVSU is the quality of the professors.
While not in the classroom or doing research, Colleen was on the SVSU dodgeball team for all four years, and was the Vice President for the club for a while. The biggest highlight of this was that SVSU won the national championship in 2012 against Grand Valley!
Life Beyond SVSU
Colleen interned at Target during both her junior and senior years, and when she graduated in 2015, she continued to work at Target as a store manager. After a while, Colleen realized that retail was not for her, so she confided in SVSU professors, and they helped guide her toward getting her Ph.D. in business-to-business marketing from Oklahoma State University. She graduated in 2022 and is now working at the University of Alabama at Birmingham as a professor and teaching marketing and supply chain management courses. Colleen loves this because she has always envisioned herself teaching, and her classes align perfectly with her research of business-to-business marketing and supply chain.
Colleen's favorite part about her job is "nerding out" with her fellow professors. She also enjoys teaching and interacting with her students. Colleen's advice to current students is to "get involved in as many different things as possible. Take chances in the classes that you take and get out of your comfort zone."
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Alumni
Wickes Hall 160
alumni@svsu.edu
(989) 964-4196