Karen Winterich shares insight into her life as a professor, president-elect and gives advice to students

After meeting the Nittany Lion at just 10 years old, Karen Winterich had no idea that life’s twists and turns would lead her back to Penn State.

Winterich grew up a Pennsylvania native in Mifflintown and said she grew up with Penn State in her life.

When Winterich was 10 years old, she went to visit her older cousin who attended Penn State at the time, and his roommate turned out to be the Nittany Lion.

“I thought it was so cool that I got to meet the Nittany Lion, and I actually have a framed picture in my office that the Nittany Lion signed, and it says, ‘Keep the Penn State spirit with you always,’” Winterich said.

When it came time for her to go off and attend college, Winterich chose Shippensburg University and graduated with a degree in “decision sciences and information systems.”

Winterich said that getting her Ph.D. wasn’t something she always wanted to do.

“I started out at Shippensburg as a math education major, and then I thought I wanted to be a business education major,” Winterich said. “I observed at my high school for one week and was like, ‘Nope not doing this!’”

Tutoring and helping people learn were always things Winterich said she loved, and eventually the lightbulb went off — she wanted to be a professor.

Winterich immediately went from her bachelor’s degree program into a doctoral program to get her Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburgh.

“I actually applied to around eight or nine Ph.D. programs and got rejected from pretty much all of them,” Winterich said. “I pretty much begged my way into Pitt.”

For four years, Winterich attended the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business and College of Business Administration, and she graduated in 2007.

While attending graduate school, Winterich met Sara Dommer, who said Winterich is an amazing colleague and a great friend.

“She is smart, she is funny, she is energetic, she is, as a professor and a researcher, incredibly motivated, and she works very, very hard,” Dommer, assistant professor of marketing at Penn State, said.

After graduating with her Ph.D., Winterich worked at Texas A&M University for three years before coming to work at Penn State.

Winterich has been at Penn State for 12 years and currently teaches a class she “made from scratch.”

“Right now, and for the last several years, I pretty much just teach Marketing 442,” Winterich said. “It’s a sustainability class, which covers sustainable behavior of consumers, firms and society.”

Braelyn Showell said she first met Winterich because of her position as a marketing ambassador for the Smeal College of Business, and she is currently in Winterich’s Marketing 442 class.

Showell (senior-marketing) said as a professor, Winterich is very interactive and energetic.

“Sometimes we have class outside, class at The Arboretum, we’ve had it on the steps of the Agricultural Science Building,” Showell said. “We had one class at this place called the LaunchBox downtown — it’s sort of like a think tank space, and we even ate crickets in her class once because we were talking about examples of sustainable proteins.”

Showell said Winterich is a professor everyone should get to experience.

“She brings so much to the table, and she’s incredibly passionate, and that makes her class that much more exciting,” Showell said.

Winterich is currently serving as the American Marketing Association president-elect and said receiving the news was “shocking.”

“I was surprised because I don’t necessarily think of myself at that ‘level,’” Winterich said.

Winterich’s husband and assistant teaching professor in the marketing department, Dave Winterich, said he wasn’t surprised when she was nominated as the president-elect for AMA.

“It’s one of those things where it’s been a long time coming, and she deserves it,” Dave said. “In that world, she is a name that people know, and it was honestly just a matter of time until she got recognized as such.”

Karen’s term as the AMA president begins in 2023 with a major goal of “creating a network for doctoral students.”

“AMA has an academic conference for faculty and doctoral students, and that was the first conference I ever attended as a doctoral student,” Karen said. “Because I didn’t come from a big Ph.D. program, I didn’t know a lot of other people getting their Ph.Ds.”

Karen wants to develop a system that helps doctoral students find a cohort or network of people.

“I really want to try and help generate a sense of belongingness with maybe some mentor-, mentee-type programs for doctoral students and assistant professors with senior faculty members that have similar interests,” Karen said.

Karen said if she could give students one piece of advice, it would be to put themselves out there.

“I think we often set the bar lower for ourselves, and I’m guilty of that too,” Karen said.

Karen said she encourages students to try new things, whether it’s a club or organization, an internship or even a job.

“I’m kind of afraid of failing, but don’t, don’t be like me, don’t be afraid of failing.”

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