Early Bird

Professor’s Room: April Schofield

An occasional series that explores the inner sanctums of academia – because clever people have interesting spaces.

By Lindsey Coulter

January 14, 2019

While working at the Pepsi Center as a business-to-business sales professional for the Denver Nuggets, April Schofield had a pretty nice view of the Auraria Campus. The close proximity also gave Schofield the opportunity to work with Metropolitan State University of Denver students on an experiential sales project, and when a teaching position opened up, she eagerly swapped her Nuggets jersey for Roadrunners red and blue.

Today, Schofield is a lecturer with the Department of Marketing as well as associate director of the Center for Professional Selling. Her passion for athletics, sales and her students is evident throughout her office, on the fifth floor of the Administration Building. For this month’s edition of the Professor’s Room, Schofield shared a few of the items that inspire her in and out of the classroom — and make her proud to be a Roadrunner.

1. Every semester, the marketing department takes students to universities across the country to participate in sales competitions with students from other programs, and these are my coaching name tags from those events. Our students tend to do well in the competitions, but it’s not always about where they place; it’s about the connections they make. We’ve had students recruited by Oracle, Groupon, UPS and Humana after these competitions.

2. I won this award for being the 32nd top-performing sales executive in the NBA, out of about 500. That year, I was given a goal of selling to high-school cheer and dance teams, an industry I knew nothing about. So I developed a program that allowed the teams to come to the Pepsi Center before a game to receive professional choreography from the Nuggets dancers that they performed at halftime. I share that story with all my classes. Even if you think a business has no interest in working with you, find out what is important to them and create value.

3. I’ve been a runner for a long time, and I completed my first full marathon this past summer in Oregon, which was a huge item to check off my bucket list. Part of being a runner means you get to eat a lot, so when I’m at my desk, I’m constantly grazing. I always have granola bars and trail mix in my stash.

4. I was a first-generation college student, so I’m passionate about seeing our first-gen students find success. That’s the fun part about working in sales; we work with partner companies who want to recruit and hire our students before they’ve even graduated. The best part of my job is seeing students get job offers.

5. My kids are 5 and 7, and seeing their artwork always puts me in a good mood. Plus, when they come into the office, they love seeing their work.

6. My family is my “why.” My kids both play hockey and ski, and they really want to come to my classes. They haven’t gotten to do that yet, but they ask about my students and want to know their names and hear stories.

If your faculty colleagues surround themselves with outrageous objects, alluring artwork or noteworthy knickknacks, please email earlybirdeditor@msudenver.edu with the subject line “Professor’s Room” to see them featured (or to nominate yourself).