Conscious Marketing in Alaska

In the Conscious Marketing course, led by Dr. Myles Landers, this experiential learning course challenges students to understand how companies balance their people, profit, and the planet. The class begins on campus, where students explore concepts of conscious capitalism, stakeholder engagement, and environmental ethics through lectures and guest speakers. 

The course then moves into the field with a partnership between MSU and the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). For these two weeks, the wilderness became the classroom as students embarked on a sea kayaking and camping expedition through Prince William Sound, Alaska. Guided by NOLS instructors, students developed outdoor and leadership skills—cooking in the wilderness, navigating by map, and leading their peers through the challenges of unpredictable weather and terrain.

“This course was the most challenging yet rewarding thing I’ve ever done,” said Maggie Clifton, a senior from Starkville, MS. “We learned how to make conscious decisions as marketers and as people—balancing social, economic, and environmental factors. My favorite memory was being woken up at 2 a.m. to see a pod of forty orcas rubbing their bellies on the beach right in front of us. Our instructors said it was something they had only ever read about.”

This inaugural course offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to apply marketing theory to real-world leadership and sustainability challenges, proving that at Mississippi State, learning doesn’t stop at the classroom door—it extends to the farthest corners of the world.