Weber State University   

SST - Sales & Merchandising

2001-2002 (submitted 10/07/02)

One of the major student learning outcomes that we assessed during the 2001-02 school year was the demonstration of knowledge and capabilities to create excellent customer service, sales presentations, sales negotiations, customer profiling, team building and sales ethics.  To measure this we surveyed our graduating students as to their most significant skill development during their time at Weber State in the sales and service technology department.  The following skill sets were mentioned multiple times:  negotiation skills, presentation skills, personality profiling, team development, and customer service.  These skills were seen as most beneficial for their employment preparation and their on-the-job success.

In their senior project experience, the senior level students were asked to share through interviews and a written project the use of skill sets in sales presentations, negotiation and supervision. The success of these techniques was measured by the faculty member with responsibility for the senior project.  These techniques were found to be relevant and beneficial in the work place.  Assignments in customer service, customer profiling and ethics will be added to future senior project classes.  We are going to add for future evaluations a rating system of student performance that will be assessed by the faculty in the department to complement what the instructor has done to evaluate the projects.

It was determined from a survey and experimentation by Desiree Larsen during her sabbatical experience that there is a greater need for more merchandising and business mathematics.  Based upon this recommendation from multiple industry contacts and our advisory committee, we are recommending that our students take Math 1030 to meet their quantitative literacy requirement.  In our SST 2383, SST 1303, SST 3153 and SST 3603 classes, we are rearranging our curriculum to spend more time in teaching merchandising and business mathematics.

Industry has recommended that our students enhance their writing skills.  During the 2002-2003 school year, we will be assessing the writing skills of our students through examination of their written case study projects in ethics, their resumes and cover letters, their sales engineering group written proposals and the senior project final paper.

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