
A Week of Immersion, A Lifetime of Inspiration
At several points in the year, Medill's Integrated Marketing Communications Professional program offers elective immersive courses. Each one provides the chance to take a course in person for one week and earn a full credit toward your degree. Courses are held in a variety of cities and give you the opportunity to build in-person connections with your faculty and classmates. This can enrich courses taken remotely and on campus with an entirely unique experience. Each immersive course brings you closer to realizing your professional aspirations.
Choose courses that align with your interests and ambitions. Gain powerful global perspectives and enrich your professional network. Focus intensely on one area of development while completing a full credit of your graduate program in a single week.

Meet your classmates in person.

Learn directly from industry leaders.

Focus deeply on a chosen area.
The Advantage of Medill's IMC Immersive Marketing Courses

Medill’s IMC immersive courses provide a unique combination of advantages: experiential learning that provides you with real-world experience and an understanding of current challenges in marketing; creative problem-solving strategies that will serve you throughout your career; direct access to industry leaders; networking opportunities with other students and alumni; and the flexibility to finish your studies and achieve your career goals. A week spent deeply entrenched with Medill faculty and your own talented classmates can give you a lifetime of inspiration.
Course Details
- Each week-long elective course fulfills one credit of the program’s 13 credits
- Course topics are designed to take unique advantage of the city in which each course is offered. Domestic courses are offered at Medill locations in Chicago, New York and San Francisco; global immersive courses are held in London and Asia
- All courses are taught entirely in person
- You’ll be eligible to take immersive courses after you complete the program’s first three core courses
- Immersive courses are optional and not required for completion of the program
Medill’s priority is always the health and safety of our students. We may make adjustments to planned course locations based on guidance from Northwestern’s Office of Global Safety and Security.
Recent Medill IMC Professional Immersive Marketing Courses
Introduction to Marketing Technology
New York City
2022 instructor:
Jonathan Copulsky
Senior Lecturer
Former CMO of Deloitte Consulting
Marketers have access to hundreds of vendors offering diverse technology applications such as campaign management, marketing resource management, marketing analytics and content marketing. Introduction to Marketing Technology introduces you to the opportunities and challenges of using these marketing technologies.
Design Thinking
San Francisco
2022 instructor:
Tran Ha
Founder and Principal at Tiny Collaborative
Former Managing Director of Media Experiments at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design
Today’s most innovative products, services and technologies identify latent needs and ways to solve them, and continuously iterate and improve. Design Thinking provides tools to help you design with your customers, not for them, and in doing so, develop strategies to drive innovation and mitigate marketing risk.
Digital Leadership
Evanston and Chicago
2022 instructors:
Randy Hlavac
Medill Lecturer
Director of the Medill IMC / IBM OmniChannel Initiative
CEO of Marketing Synergy, Inc.
Erik Qualman
Founder of Socialnomics
Bestselling Author and Motivational Speaker
Digital leaders are made, not born. Learn how to step fully into leadership in this digital decade. Begin to future-proof yourself and your organization by staying a year ahead of your competition, but never a year ahead of your market.
Investor Relations: From Wall Street to Board Rooms
New York City
2023 instructors:
Nancy Hobor
Assistant Professor
Former SVP for Communications and Investor Relations at W.W. Grainger, Inc.
Bradley Akubuiro
Partner at Bully Pulpit Interactive
This class is essential for anyone who plans to work in or run a company someday. It helps you understand the way the C-suite thinks and become more strategic in dealing with leadership.
Building Brand Advocacy
San Francisco
2022 instructor:
Chris Kneeland
Co-founder and CEO of Cult Collective Ltd.
Co-founder, Advisor and Board Member
of Communo
Gain inspiration and insights necessary to think bigger about the role brands can play in the lives of their customers, prospects and employees. Learn how some brands deliberately transcend transactional relationships and not only get consumers to buy, but to buy in.
Global Perspectives—London
London, UK
2023 instructor:
Candy Lee
Medill Professor of Marketing and
of Journalism
Former VP of Marketing at The Washington Post
In this course, you’ll learn about global marketing, the financial hub that is London, organizational behavior and the skills needed to lead brands in the new digital and creative economy that is international and multicultural within one border.
Been There, Loved That: Firsthand Experience with Medill's Immersive Courses

Lindsay B., IMC ’22

Christopher I., IMC ’22
Keep Asking Questions
Are immersive courses required for degree completion?
Do immersive courses carry the same credit value as the other courses in the program?
What costs are associated with the IMC immersive courses?
How are immersive courses different from the other elective course offerings?
- They are offered in person, during breaks between regular academic quarters
- Each one is about a week long and provides a more concentrated, intensive experience than the standard courses, each of which requires a full academic quarter for completion
- They provide further opportunities for in-person course experiences; students can meet with peers, faculty members, and students in other cohorts, and gain the benefits of hands-on learning
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Are you a working professional looking to take your career to the next level?
Earn your master’s degree online, in-person or a combination with Northwestern University. Our Integrated Marketing Communications Professional program, offered through the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications helps you build your expertise in consumer understanding through a rigorous and immersive curriculum.
Complete the form to download a program brochure for more information on the IMC Professional program.