At DSA’s Annual Meeting in June, 29 DSEF Fellows joined the Foundation for a Learning Journey to discover firsthand the challenges and topics important to the direct selling community.
To kick-off this academic learning experience, DSEF Academic Advisory Committee Member and DSEF Board Member, Dr. Victoria Crittenden, Professor and Chair, Marketing Division, Babson College, lent her leadership in a workshop before the conference began that illustrated the opportunities of the DSEF Fellows program.
Dr. Crittenden explained, the importance of having it for the Fellows in attendance. “The DSEF Fellows Workshop is always a great event at the DSA Annual Meeting. This year, we heard from eight Fellows about how they are bringing direct selling to their college campuses, individual classrooms, and research.” she said. “It was especially exciting to hear how some of our newest Fellows are already active in their engagement with direct selling executives and with the DSEF. In addition to the workshop, the conviviality among the Fellows was dynamic this year. Not surprisingly, several of the Fellows took that dynamism to the Casino floor, which was great fun.”
Dr. Crittenden planned and moderated the workshop designed to demonstrate how Fellows can collaborate with DSEF on research, campus events, experiential learning projects, etc. and inspire Fellows to become active, productive partners. These workshop interactions often lead to new teaching content that will ultimately reach 60,000 students a year, channel-validating research to help the industry counter misconceptions and executive visits to university campuses, to share real-world business experiences with students.
