Honors Program

The Honors Program is an opportunity for students to synthesize the learning from their major and their concentration to tackle real-world projects with one of our Business Honors Program partners.

Participating client organizations will sponsor a team of capable and motivated marketing and business analytics students to work on a collaboratively defined strategic project which will have measurable outcomes and deliverables.

Students will be given the autonomy to define the roadmap, timeline, and milestones for achieving agreed-upon goals. At the conclusion of the semester, student teams will present their findings and recommendations to the leadership team from the sponsoring organization.

Why the Business Honors Program?

Honors students will:

• Get exposure to leading companies and organizations in Silicon Valley and beyond
• Collaborate with other honors students in both the marketing and business analytics disciplines, as well as professionals from the sponsoring organization
• Develop leadership and professional skills while getting hands-on experience and further honing their technical skill in their chosen discipline(s)
• Hear from top leaders in Silicon Valley and around the world throughout the semester
• Network with other peers in their own department as well as in the Sbona Honors Program at large
• Have the opportunity to earn departmental honors by maintaining excellence in their studies and completing a scholarly project

NOTE: Department honors notation on diplomas will be awarded to students successfully completing 6 units in the program over two semesters, who also maintain a 3.5 GPA in their major and complete a scholarly paper.

Students who successfully complete either 3 units (one semester) or 6 units (two semesters) but do not meet the GPA or scholarly project requirements will still receive a certificate from their department indicating honors completion each semester they participate.

When is it?

For marketing and business analytics majors, the course, BUS2 137H, meets Monday evenings from 6:00 – 8:45 p.m.

Who is qualified and how do I apply?

• A minimum GPA of 3.0 is recommended.
• Transfer students must have completed one semester at SJSU.
• Applicants may self-nominate, and must provide a faculty reference, a resume, and an unofficial SJSU transcript.
• Nominees must have completed the introductory course in their major. For Marketing Majors, prospective students must complete BUS2 130 (Introduction to Marketing); for Business Analytics Majors, prospective students must complete BUS2 194A (Statistical Analysis).
• Students are also asked to write two short (250 word) essays explaining what they would contribute to and expect to get from the Honors Program.
• NOTE: Acceptance in the program is not automatic. The application process has two stages; once the application form has been submitted, the honors committee will decide which students will be invited for a personal interview with program coordinators. After the interview, a final evaluation (acceptance, wait list, or non-acceptance) will be made and communicated to the student.

For Spring 2024, the application is now open and the close date will be toward the end of the Fall semester (date to be announced soon).

We look forward to hearing from you soon!

Apply to the Business Honors Program

David McFeely

Mr. McFeely is a marketing adjunct professor in the Lucas College of Business at San Jose State University. Undergraduate courses taught include Business Statistics, International Marketing, and Marketing in New Ventures.

Mr. McFeely serves as the Marketing Department representative for the BSBA Task Force on Critical Thinking, and the President’s Veterans Advisory Committee.

Recent accomplishments include a certificate in High Speed Rail Transportation Management; and Digital Badges in TensorFlow, Machine Learning, Spark-Jupyter Notebooks, and Tableau. He is currently working on a completing a second Masters in Transportation Management through SJSU’s Mineta Transportation Institute.

Mr. McFeely has over 30 years of experience in several major companies and a wide range of roles: Philips Semiconductor, Hewlett-Packard, Analogy, and Agilent Technologies; in design engineering, application engineering, field sales support, and marketing; for products and services in semiconductor design, semiconductor equipment, and electronic design automation.

Heidi Livingston Eisips

Ms. Livingston Eisips is adjunct faculty in both Marketing and Business Analytics and Interdisciplinary Engineering at San Jose State University. She teaches a wide variety of statistics, analytics, marketing, and engineering communication courses.

Ms. Eisips serves on the Anti-Racism Task Force for the Lucas College of Business, as well as the university-wide Honors Task Force.

A member of SJSU’s Doctoral program in Educational Leadership, with an emphasis on higher ed leadership and student success, Ms. Eisips is also a founding member of the Unconscious Bias Working Group at Santa Clara University’s Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship.

Ms. Eisips has worked for more than twenty-five years with organizations ranging from Fortune 100's to start-ups, from  private sector to non-profits across a variety of industries, including enterprise software, mobile, and biopharmaceutical. She is a member of the American Marketing Association, American Educational Research Association, and the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.