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Outstanding Marketing Educator
UT Tyler Professor Honored for Innovative Teaching 
As a professional marketer working internationally,
Dr. Barbara Ross Wooldridge
was an expert at analyzing the needs and
wants of consumers and creating effective
strategies for serving them. As an associate
professor of marketing at The University
of Texas at Tyler, she now focuses on the
educational needs and wants of students
and is an expert at creatively engaging and
inspiring them in the classroom.
Dr. Wooldridge has been branded across
campus and beyond as an outstanding
educator.
The professor won the Society for
Marketing Advances’ Houghton Mifflin/
Pride/Ferrell Teaching Innovations Award
in 2005 and again in 2007.
The award recognizes innovative teaching
methods that have proven effective in the
classroom. Eight finalists are chosen from
educators across the United States and
abroad, and each must present his or her
innovation before a panel of judges. A
winner is selected by the panel of noted
marketing educators, researchers and
textbook authors.
Dr. Wooldridge received the 2005 award
as a faculty member at the University of
Tampa for her in-class product taste test
that enables students to experience the
power of packaging. She won last year
while on the UT Tyler faculty for her
version of the Oscars – the Golden Duck
Awards.
Highly rated by UT Tyler students, the
Golden Ducks interactive game adds
the element of competition to student
participation in classroom discussions and
integrates students into the creation of
class content. Average scores on exams also
have improved as a result of the active
learning strategy.
This year, the professor was recognized
by the Northeast Texas Consortium of
Colleges and Universities as an outstanding
leader for her creative use of distance
learning technology in the classroom. She
was honored for effectively engaging
students simultaneously at all three
campuses. The classes were physically held
on the main campus and transmitted via
interactive television to Palestine and
Longview.
Dr.Wooldridge will serve as guest editor of
the “Marketing Education Review’s’’
spring 2009 special issue on teaching
innovations, as a result of winning the
Houghton Mifflin/Pride/Ferrell Teaching
Innovations Award.
Millennial students respond best to active
learning, said Dr. Wooldridge, who also
serves as interim associate dean of the UT
Tyler School of Business administration.
“Every class is different, every class has a
personality of its own, so a teacher has to find
ways to connect with each particular class,’’
said the professor, noting that students also
change as times change.
“When I was a student, you came to class, sat
down, you took notes. If the professor told
you to read the chapter, you read the chapter.
Students of today? You have to convince
them of the value of buying the textbook,
then you have to convince them of the value
of reading more than the summary at the end
of each chapter and then you have to engage
them. Should it be that way? I don’t know.
I’m a marketer; I’m not concerned with what
should be. I deal with what is.
“So classes should be engaging and fun but
they also must be linked to learning and substance.
To win a Golden Duck, for example,
students have to know the textbook material
because to make a ‘duck-worthy’ comment in
class, they have to apply what they’ve read in
the textbook to the lecture material and move
the lecture forward,’’ she said.
“That’s one of the aspects of teaching that I
enjoy most -- thinking out how to get the
students involved and how to do it in sort of
a new and different way.’’
Gifted in Creativity
Dr. Wooldridge is deeply committed and
highly gifted as an educator “and creativity is
one of her special gifts,’’ said Dr. Jim Tarter,
dean of the UT Tyler College of Business and
Technology.
“She is a phenomenal individual who is creative
in her ability to engage students in the
classroom and deliver subjects that suit both
need and want.
“Last fall, she taught a class of 182 students,
the largest class we’d ever had in business
administration. She approached the class in
ways that were engaging and did it with high
evaluations from the students,’’ Dr. Tarter
said of her Principles of Marketing class,
which she is teaching again this fall with as
many students.
Dr. Wooldridge also receives high evaluations
in other classes she teaches, the dean said.
“Based on evaluations, students see her as caring,
available, approachable. She also
demands rigor, takes a stand for integrity and
ethics and has a personal, very strong sense of
concern for people being treated fairly.’’
Looking Forward to Class
Management major Sterling Winn took Dr.
Wooldridge’s Principles of Marketing and
Services Marketing classes. “I always looked
forward to Dr. Wooldridge’s classes and I
hope to take more of her classes when I return
to UT Tyler to pursue my master’s degree,’’
said the Tyler resident and spring graduate.
“Her classes are challenging but very enjoyable.
They aren’t structured to the point of
students coming in, getting out their notebooks
and just taking notes while she lectures.
She uses techniques such as the Golden Duck
Awards to stimulate thought and motivate
the class to interact. She makes the class an
open forum for discussion and not just a
regurgitation of facts and theories,’’ Winn
said.
“And the way she draws you into her lectures,
you forget there are other students sitting in
the room with you. You almost feel as if you
are having a one-on-one visit with her.’’
Dr. Wooldridge has an extensive background
in the hospitality industry and served in
Kenya and Seychelles as a marketing manager.
Her work as a volunteer expert with the
International Executive Service Corps has
taken her to Tanzania and Uganda. She also
worked in media relations for a professional
football team in her hometown of
Washington, D.C. The professor shares those
work experiences with her students.
“I took her Services Marketing class and it
was all about the consumer and the service
provider, problems with a service and ways to
solve those problems,’’ said Tara Watson of
Shepherd, a marketing major who graduated
in May. “Dr. Wooldridge has worked all over
in marketing and was able to share so many
real-world examples. It was one of the most
interesting classes I’d ever taken.’’
Marketing Career
Dr. Wooldridge majored in radio, television
and film in the bachelor of fine arts in mass
communications program at James Madison
University, Harrisonburg, Va. Her dream was
to work in media relations and marketing for
a football team. Graduating magna cum
laude, she was well prepared to work in sports
marketing. Back then, however, sports
marketing was not quite ready for her.
She was the only woman on the job when she
worked for the Washington football team.
“Oh my goodness, it was horrible because the
men would ask, ‘Who did you know in order
to get the job?’ And I’d tell them, ‘No, I
worked really hard in school to get this job,’’
Dr. Wooldridge recalled. “No one took me
seriously. … So I said, ‘This really isn’t for
me.’ I decided I wanted my career in marketing
to be global.’’
 She entered the graduate program at the
Cornell University School of Hotel
Administration, Ithaca, N.Y., to prepare for a
career in international marketing. While
there, she also enjoyed working as a teaching
assistant.
“I thought, ‘I’d love to become a university
professor – but not yet.’ I finished those two
years of graduate school, went to work in
global marketing for five years and then came
back and earned my Ph.D. to become a professor,’’
said Dr. Wooldridge, who earned her
doctorate in business administration at
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, La.
Prior to pursuing her doctorate, Dr.
Wooldridge fulfilled her childhood dream of
residing in Africa. In 1990 she was recruited
to serve as director of marketing for
Seychelles Hotels in Mahe, Seychelles, a
chain of islands 1,000 miles off the east coast
of Africa. From 1992 to 1994, she was
marketing and sales manager for Universal
Safari Tours, the largest ground tour operator
in Nairobi, Kenya.
Teacher at Heart
Dr. Wooldridge joined the UT Tyler faculty
in 1999, after completing her doctorate. She
left the university in 2002 to relocate to
Florida for family reasons, and returned to
the university in 2007.
In addition to her awards in education, she is
a prolific researcher in marketing with a
distinguished record of writing and being
published in an array of publications,
including the “Cornell Quarterly,’’
“The Learning Organization’’, “Corporate
Communications International Journal’’ and
other peer reviewed publications, Dr. Tarter
noted.
But Dr. Wooldridge finds her greatest reward
in teaching UT Tyler students.
“I love researching and writing articles, but
I’m not so egotistical to think I’m making a
huge impact on the world with my articles. If
I can make a difference in the life of at least
one student each semester, that’s where I
make my impact. That’s a wonderful legacy.
You get to do that in a smaller school,
because you really get to know your students
and they get to know you,’’ she said. “You are
able to develop bonds with them that allow
you to make a difference in their lives.’’
Students make a difference in her life as well.
Dr. Wooldridge’s mother passed away in
November 2000. It was a very difficult time
for the professor and her family.
“My mother passed away very unexpectedly,
very tragically. I received the call right before
I was going to teach class: ‘Come now if you ever want to see her alive again.’ I didn’t make
it in time to see her. It was just a devastating
period in our family. We were at my parents’
house in Florida and a beautiful bunch of
flowers arrived. There was a note stating,
‘From all your students, to let you and your
family know that we care,’ ’’ she recalled.
“That’s what makes this university special –
that connection between professors and
students. It was here when I first came. It was
one of the reasons why I came back.’’
Dr. Wooldridge resides in Tyler with her
husband, Stan, a banker who also works in
oil and gas leasing, and their 5-year-old son,
Ford. In her spare time, the professor enjoys
reading, traveling, walking her dogs and
going to LSU football games.
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