Neil Wellman
Neil Wellman
Senior Lecturer in Marketing
Department: Business and Management
Room No: O1.41a
Telephone No: +44(0)29 2041 7326
Email Address: nwellman@cardiffmet.ac.uk
After gaining an HND in Business (marketing) in 1973 and the CIM Post Graduate Diploma in 1974, I worked for over 25 years as a marketing practitioner in consultancy and operational management roles in both the public and private sectors. A major part of my later career (as Regional Marketing Manager within the MSC/DE, Divisional Marketing Manager within the NHS and as a freelance consultant) focused on the marketing aspects of staff and organisational development initiatives with a special interest in national occupational standards and vocational qualifications.
Following part-time teaching, I joined the City of Bristol College full-time in 2000 with the brief to introduce and manage the full suite of CIM professional courses (the CoBC programme became one of the UK's largest and most successful) as well as teaching on other HE courses. During this period I gained a Further and Adult Education Teaching Certificate (FAETC), a PG Certificate in Education (PGCE) and an MA in Marketing. My MA dissertation investigated the marketing planning practices of medium sized businesses and identified significant differences between marketing theory and practice (the, now well known, "theory-practice gap").
In 2005 I joined the Cardiff School of Management, with the opportunity to further pursue my research being a major stimulus. I now combine module leadership and teaching on undergraduate, MSc and MBA programmes with Doctoral research focusing on the "gap". This compares the undergraduate marketing curriculum with the skills and knowledge required of early career marketing graduates in order to bridge the gap by making the curriculum more relevant to the demands of the workplace.
This builds upon my previous experiences as a practitioner and of working with occupational standards and aligns closely with initiatives from the Marketing and Sales Standard Setting Body's (MSSSB) and the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), as well as a groundswell of concern from educators, practitioners and employers. To date I have presented several papers on this topic and have published articles based on my findings.
On broader fronts, I am a University of Wales Moderator for a large international institution, a member of the UWIC Employability Working Group and have served as Chair of the Retail and Marketing Field Group. I also maintain my broader interest in the process of strategy development and marketing planning.