Ewa Maslowska, an assistant professor in the Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising, was selected to receive the Provost’s Initiative on Teaching Advancement Grant. The grant enables recipients to design, implement, and assess instructional and pedagogical innovation that has a high probability of enhancing education at the University of Illinois. 

“I am just very honored to have been awarded the PITA grant and I am looking forward to working on it,” Maslowska said. “I hope we will be able to develop a sustainable framework that will provide students with hands-on experiences and make teaching and learning about advertising even more exciting.” 

Her proposal details a major obstacle in preparing students for the digital transformation, which is the lack of direct access to many of the proprietary data and technologies used in the industry. In media and advertising, close to 90 percent of digital ads are bought and sold programmatically through computer algorithms called Real-Time Bidding (RTB). As RTB is currently taught at a basic conceptual level, her project aims to provide an opportunity for hands-on learning and practice by developing a framework with sample data and case studies to help students understand the principles of the process and improve their skills.

—Da Yeon Eom, Communications and Marketing Intern