ARCHIVE: Clark Preparing PCC Students for Marketing and Retailing Success

WINTERVILLE – For 15 years, Hope V. Clark has been preparing Pitt Community College students for the fast-paced world of marketing and retailing. Thankfully for her, it’s a job that’s proven to be as gratifying as it has time-consuming.

Since joining PCC in 1990, Clark has been Program Coordinator of the college’s Business Administration: Marketing and Retailing Concentration. In that capacity, she has prepared a multitude of students for a variety of rewarding careers – one former student manages a party boat operation in Key West while another oversees a Burlington golf course.

Clark explains that her program is designed to produce graduates who can get the job done in a myriad of workplaces. “My former students are doing a lot of different things,” she said. “It’s wide open as to whatever they want to do.”

Next month, one of Clark’s former students – Brian Moffitt – will be featured in Career Focus. The educational magazine will be mailed to 62,000 Pitt County households and includes photos and details from a visit Clark recently made to Petty Enterprises, Inc., where the 1994 PCC graduate she once instructed is Vice President of Marketing.

“It’s been nice to watch Brian mature and to watch him reach the position he has attained in what I feel has been a short period of time,” Clark said. “I knew he would be a successful person because he was such a hard worker.”

The term ‘hard worker’ is one that could just as easily be applied to Clark. In fact, PCC’s division deans named her the college’s “Joseph E. Downing Award” winner for 2004. The esteemed recognition is given annually to a PCC instructor for teaching excellence.

“That was wonderful,” Clark said of her award. “It’s very nice to be recognized by your peers. It made me feel like I’m doing something right in helping students achieve their goals and that somebody recognized that.”

Utilizing hands-on activities (“I’m big on projects,” Clark says.) and classroom lectures, Clark emphasizes teamwork and good communication while striving to reach each of her students “regardless of their individual learning styles.” She teaches 10 of the courses (some through the Internet) needed for an associate’s degree, including Principles of Marketing, Retailing, Advertising and Sales Promotion, and Visual Merchandising.

Away from the classroom, Clark is equally active at Pitt. She is a member of the PCC Foundation Board and, as such, participates in several fund-raising projects each year, including the Down East Boat Show, scholarship auction, and Holiday Show. “Everything the board does,” she says, “I am there.”

Clark is also PCC’s Delta Epsilon Chi advisor. The organization for students in Pitt’s Marketing and Retailing curriculum raises money each year for Toys for Tots and helps facilitate a pair of high school DECA events.

Without question, Clark’s slate is full, but she takes pleasure in her work and PCC. “I like working here; I enjoy it,” Clark said. “I like working with the students and seeing them realize their goals and knowing that I played at least a small part in it. It’s nice to have them call me (after they graduate) and say, ‘Thank you.'”

A Murfreesboro native, Clark has lived in Pitt County for more than 10 years. She and her husband, Bobby, live near Macclesfield.

03/31/2005