2018 was a big year for Stukent as a lot of great things happened! With the start of this new year, let’s take a month-by-month look of what took place last year.
January
The second round of the Stukent DECA challenge was held. There were 5,242 participants in the competition.
February
Stukent focused on improving leadership and career field skills within the company. The head of sales, Brandon Winter, attended the 10X Growth Conference in Las Vegas, Nev.
CEO Stuart Draper and CFO Mike Andrus attended the Start-Up Grind Conference in Redwood City, Calif., and Trevor Erikson, the head of marketing, attended Social Media Marketing World in San Diego, Calif.
Stukent’s first book of the year, Business Writing, launched. Yael Grauer, a copyblogger and master-level certified content marketer wrote the book to help students learn critical skills like content marketing, audience segmentation, and content marketing strategy so they can meet the growing demand for content marketers.
March
Stukent’s first textbook for the high school space, Marketing Strategies, was released.
The book was written by Stukent employees: Trevor Erikson, the head of marketing; Hailey Voorhies, director of public relations; and Ryan Hales, head writer and editor. Marketing Strategies is to provide up-to-date marketing concepts for teachers and students.
A new digital textbook, Marketing Analytics, also launched in March. This text was written by Brennan Davis of the Orfalea College of Business at California Polytechnic State University. With the book, instructors have resources to teach critical skills of data visualization, A/B testing, audience segmentation, and artificial intelligence.
April
ICDC-DECA was held in Atlanta, Ga. This was a big conference for the company. Stukent sponsored the advisor’s lounge for teachers to come relax (with free massages) and meet the four course consultants at the conference. Brandon Winter, Stukent’s head of sales, presented awarded the three winning students of the Stukent DECA challenge.
Stukent moved. The company relocated from Rexburg, Idaho, to Idaho Falls, Idaho. New office space will better accommodate an expanding number of employees.
May
Essentials of Social Media Marketing was released. The author, Michelle Charello, is an adjunct faculty member at Bryant University and a senior marketing
manager for a Fortune 500 company. Instructors can use the application-based textbook to utilize marketing strategies for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Youtube.
June
SEMrush and Stukent partnered to give students free access to tools and instructors resources to help students use those tools.
July
Edify, Stukent’s new courseware and content management platform, launched in preparation for the Fall 2018 semester.
Stukent partnered with DOMO to release new courseware to help students improve their data analytics and processing skills.
August
The first Stukent Digital Summit — a virtual gathering for educators and industry practitioners — was held with over 1,200 registrants. The speaker line up included:
- Stuart Draper, founder and CEO of Stukent
Academic Track Speakers
- Jeff Larson, associate professor of marketing at Brigham Young University
- Scott Cowley, digital marketing professor at Western Michigan University
- Brennan Davis, associate marketing professor at California Polytechnic State University
- Atefeh Yazdanparast, associate professor of marketing and University of Evansville
Industry Insight Speakers
- Heather Dopson, community builder at GoDaddy
- Maryna Hradovich, vice president of strategic growth and development at SEMrush
- Brian Peters, digital marketing strategist at Buffer
- Travis Chambers, chief media hacker of Chamber Media
- Dennis Yu and Logan Young, co-founders of BlitzMetrics
Stukent placed at #268 on the Inc. 500 list as one of the fastest growing private companies in the country.
The Inc. 500 list is comprised of the top 500 companies on the full Inc. 5000 list.
September
Edify begins to handle courseware for the first full semester.
October
The second Stukent Digital Summit — Fall SDS — was held in October. Speakers included
- Stuart Draper, founder and CEO of Stukent
- Scott Cowley, assistant professor of marketing at Western Michigan University
- Karen Freberg, associate professor of strategic communication at University of Louisville
- Matt Maroon, Department of Business faculty member at Brigham Young University-Idaho
- Rich Hanna, assistant professor at Babson College
During Fall SDS, Stukent’s first in-person conference, ProfCon, was announced for June 2019.
Stukent’s line up of textbooks continued to grow with the addition of Market Research, written by Steven Stromp from Spectrum Health and currently the executive director of market intelligence at Davenport University. The book instructs students on how to properly conduct market research and how to effectively present and utilize the results of that research.
Stukent leaders Stuart Draper, Mike Andrus, Brandon Winters, Mike Farmer, Trevor Erikson, and Travis Draper represented the company at the Inc. 5000 Conference & Gala in San Antonio, Texas, that was held to honor the 5,000 fastest growing companies in the US.
November
At the largest conference of the year of the Association for Career and Technical Education, the ACTE CareerTech VISION 2018 Conference, Stukent course consultants hosted an information session about teaching social media marketing
December
Consumer Behavior launched in December. This new digital textbook was written by Radhika Duggal, head of student marketing at Chase and an adjunct assistant instructor at New York University.
The book presents how consumers choose, use, and dispose of products, services, experiences, and ideas. It also shows how to gain insights for making sure that products, services, experiences, and ideas are selected by target consumers.
Stukent turned five in December. It’s been a great five years, and the company continues to provide courseware including digital textbooks and business simulations for students and educators.
With 2019 upon us, Stukent plans to continue providing first-in-the-world courseware while building on current and future partnerships with educational institutions as the company works to help educators help students help the world.