Fisher Institute for Professional Selling
Established through a generous gift from Ronald and Diane Fisher in 1992, the Ronald R. and Diane C. Fisher Institute for Professional Selling was officially launched in January 1994 with a new facility and a new Director, Dr. Jon Hawes. The University of Akron was the second university in the United States to officially start a sales program, after offering sales classes since the mid 1980's. In April of 2002, U.A. was one of nine founding member universities to create the University Sales Center Alliance (U.S.C.A.). The sole purpose of this organization is to enhance professionalism in sales, and share best practices to further the development and training of future sales professionals. Currently, the University of Akron is one of only 32 Full Member (56 total member), schools which are accredited by the U.S.C.A. Considered by many as one of the nations best sales education programs, our University of Akron sales and marketing students are the benefactors of the Fisher Institute for Professional Selling, resulting in the support of over 30 Corporate Partnerships, and virtually 100% job placement for nearly a decade.
Per the vision of Ronald and Diane Fisher, the mission of the Fisher Institute for Professional Selling is: to enhance the image of the sales profession and to promote professional selling and sales management as a rewarding lifelong career; to provide world-class, high-quality excellence in sales education through our sales major, minor in professional selling, and our three sales certificate programs (General, Healthcare and Engineering). Our robust sales education delivered by our outstanding and experienced sales faculty, along with our one-of-a-kind, state-of-the-art sales facility has resulted in outstanding sales readiness of our sales students. Well prepared sales students quickly grow into top sales talent for the corporate partners. Our brand new Fisher Institute has 9 large sales lab rooms with duel zooming cameras and cloud-based video and audio recording which can be accessed from anywhere in the world where Wi-Fi is available. With over 1,000 sales program graduates, the University of Akron alumni has made a profound positive impact on the local and regional business community.
In business today, the sales function generates the revenue that enables the rest of the corporation to operate. Jobs are usually abundant in the field of sales and out current job placement for our graduating sales majors and minors is 100% (compared to 37% in some other majors). Coming Soon... U.A. will be re-launching executive sales training for our Fisher Corporate Partners and regional companies. Please visit our Fisher website for more information.