Darrien Harris is a graduate student pursuing his master's degree in marketing research in the Broad College of Business.
I was determined to become a college football player, and in my senior year I helped the Michigan State University team win the 2015 Big Ten championship and make the College Football Playoff as co-captain.
My determination to join the National Football League took me to the Cincinnati Bengals, and when my athletic career ended much sooner than I expected, I decided I would continue my education at MSU.
Although I’m back in East Lansing, the decision to return wasn’t easy. Student-athletes try to get as much out of college as possible while they’re here, but once they’re gone, they feel like there’s no space to come back.
Student-athletes don’t want to deal with coming back and people asking “What happened? Why aren’t you on a team? Why didn’t you make it?” I can empathize with that because I got those questions.
But I found a space for my return: the Master of Science in Marketing Research Program, a nationally renowned postgraduate offering of the Eli Broad College of Business. The MSMR program was ranked as the best marketing research program in North America in Eduniversal’s Best Masters in Marketing Ranking for 2018, and it is boosted by more than 70 companies on its board – including GM, FedEx, Microsoft, and even the NFL, among other major players – that provide guidance to and recruit from the program.
I kind of stumbled upon it. I had left the Cincinnati Bengals and was back up here, waiting for the phone to ring.
I always knew that I wanted to get my master’s; it was really just a situation of figuring out which program started in the spring, which one I’d be interested in and then picking one and getting in.
There’s been a lot of blessings in disguise that have come from the MSMR program, namely working with such great people like program director Jessica Richards; she has been phenomenal in my transition from a professional athletic career to postgraduate work.
Because my academic career was taking off as my professional athletic career was lingering indefinitely, I would leave and come back frequently. I’ve been a part of three different cohorts. I have 25 new friends every single time I come back, and everybody has been fantastic in the program, and motivated. That’s why they’re putting people in these great jobs.
Professor Dale Wilson has also had a couple classes that have probably been my favorites in the program, and he’s been really open to me leaving and coming back, and has been incredibly helpful.
The business world was a change for me. My 2015 undergraduate degree was in journalism, and since then I’ve done on-air work on the Big Ten Network and radio appearances. For a while that was all I wanted to do, was just be in the media realm. But as you get into it, you realize more of what that entails. I realized I wanted something different.
Now, I embrace my new career path. And the value of academia runs in my family. My grandmother holds a Ph.D. in social work and is a retired professor from Virginia Commonwealth University; my mother is an attorney with the Department of Education in Washington, D.C.; and my younger brother is currently attending Yale on an academic scholarship.
The opportunities that my brother and I had — not a lot of people that look like us have these experiences. That’s why it’s been big for me to move into that space, where I can create more opportunities for minorities and disenfranchised people.
I’d like to become an education policy analyst after graduation, using my knowledge of research to help improve the public school system. These are all things that will come down the road, but it’s been good for me to think about it now.
I think that being in this program – even if what I end up doing isn’t necessarily marketing research – is going to help me in whatever I do.
This story was edited and repurposed with permission from the Broad College of Business. To view the original story by student writer Emma Kauffman, go to broad.msu.edu.
