Creating a Promotions Club until the Class Returned

When McIntire’s Promotions class was placed on hold for the fall of 2025 as long-time faculty lead Carrie Heilman battled cancer, fourth-year student Abby Uhlfelder refused to accept it as the end of the story. Instead, she helped rewrite it. Despite being momentarily stunned, she quickly resolved to find a way forward, determined to continue the elite marketing experience Heilman had famously delivered.

“We have to do something,” Abby recalls thinking. Alongside fellow fourth-year Aren Arduino, she quickly began reaching out to classmates, gathering contacts, and organizing a plan. If Promotions could not run for a semester as a class, they would run it themselves, as a club.

That decision set the tone for the academic year that followed.

As many McIntire alumni know, Promotions isn’t your typical course. It functions more like a student-run advertising agency, where, over the course of two semesters, students collaborate on a complex and sophisticated national campaign for a real client and present competitively to the American Advertising Federation. This year, the client was the NFL.

In the spirit of student self-governance, Abby and Aren took it upon themselves to motivate a group of busy fourth-year students to commit to the demanding NFL project purely out of interest and pride. Abby leaned on both instinct and her background in psychology to make it work.

“You have to get people to buy in,” she says. “Especially when it is not for credit and on top of everything else.”

Her approach centered on building relationships first. She organized group dinners, social events, and informal activities that encouraged connection beyond the work itself. “Once you feel responsible for something bigger than yourself and you actually care about the people, you are more willing to put in the time,” she explains.

It worked. Her group met consistently every week, breaking the project into smaller milestones to stay on track. By the end of the semester, they had not only generated ideas but also built a foundation that would carry into the spring.

When Promotions officially returned as a for-credit class in the spring under the direction of McIntire Professor Derick Davis, that early effort paid off.

“Because people were already committed to Promo as a club during the fall, when it became a class, that dedication was even stronger,” Abby says. What had started as a voluntary commitment transformed into a full-scale operation, with the entire class working as a unified team rather than separate groups.

That structure reinforced one of the defining aspects of the storied Promotions experience: Students are expected to lead. Abby and her co-executive effectively ran it, planning sessions, taking attendance, assigning roles, and guiding the entire process for months.

Still, the success of the program was not just about leadership or organization. At its core, it was about dedication and a shared sense of purpose. And much of that purpose traces back to one person: Carrie Heilman.

After her passing, Carrie Heilman’s office door was filled with tribute notes from her Promotions students, to be given to her family. (Contributed photo)

In early 2026, after several months of uncertainty, Professor Heilman passed away after her battle with cancer. Though she was not able to be physically present in the same way during Abby’s experience, her influence was everywhere.

Students relied heavily on the materials and systems she had created, using past timelines and frameworks to guide their own work. But her impact went far beyond logistics. It was embedded in the cultural fabric of McIntire.

“In a lot of ways, Carrie is this group,” Abby says. “The whole class is her.”

Heilman had built a program where students cared deeply about each other and the work they were producing. That culture of commitment carried through even in her absence.

“We think about her all the time,” Abby says. “There is this feeling of doing it for Carrie and trying to make her proud.”

That motivation became especially meaningful given the challenges the group faced. Running as a student-directed club, navigating uncertainty, and managing a massive project without a traditional structure could have easily led to disengagement. Instead, it strengthened the team’s resolve.

Abby saw that dedication as ideas turned into tangible results. “To see something go from nothing to this whole production is amazing,” she says. “It’s been incredible to see how every piece, done by everyone in the class, has gone from ideas in brainstorm pitches to something real.”

That sense of ownership extended across the entire class. Students contributed their individual skills while working toward a shared goal, creating a final product that reflected both their creativity and their collective effort.

For Abby, the experience confirmed her passion for marketing and advertising while also showing her how those fields operate in practice. It also gave her a clearer understanding of teamwork, leadership, and what it takes to bring a large-scale project to life.

More than anything, as Abby and her classmates presented their final NFL campaign at the AAF district-level competition in Charlotte, NC, Promotions became a story about a group of students who found a way forward and maintained the tradition of this flagship course. It was also about honoring the legacy and lasting influence of someone who helped define what Promotions could be.