Hopkins students work on a collegiate recruitment program  

It’s not every day that a college student finds himself reporting to an FBI agent — and what makes it really strange is that the FBI is the student’s client.

But that’s what is going on this semester at the Johns Hopkins University in Leslie Kendrick’s Advertising and Promotion class, which is one of four across the country selected to develop and implement a marketing plan for the bureau’s collegiate and marketing recruitment program. Connected through California-based EdVenture Partners, which matches industry clients to classrooms looking for real-world experience, students are gaining valuable marketing experience with an actual company.

“Students I’ve taken to networking meetings, when they describe this experience to executives they just can’t believe they’ve had this experience with a client and a budget in a real business setting,” Kendrick said.

The class’s 36 students have formed a marketing agency called four10 Promotions, which is divided into departments for research, advertising, multimedia, marketing, public relations and budget. The class was given a $3,000 budget to research, implement and evaluate a marketing campaign designed to entice qualified students to apply for the FBI’s physical scientist job openings.

While EdVenture’s 48 clients pay a fee to the company in addition to the class budget, it’s still a steal for clients, said the company’s CEO, Tony Sgro.

“We are cut-rate considering we have embedded the client into a campus and its culture for 15 weeks,” said Sgro, who would not disclose the fee for competitive reasons. “The client gets … an ambassador and creative research that they own.”

Sgro said Hopkins was selected to work with the FBI because of the school’s strong physical science and engineering majors, which are the student backgrounds the bureau is trying to attract. A class at the George Washington University and two classes at the University of Southern California are also working with the FBI this semester.

A representative for the bureau was unable to comment by press time.

This is the second time Kendrick’s class has worked with the FBI. The previous time was in 2006, the first year the class was offered, when students launched a marketing campaign to attract field agents. Other clients the class has served are the U.S. Navy’s health professional scholarship program, a cell phone mobile banking firm and Nissan.

Jack Anderson, the class’s research department co-manager, said being part of four10 Promotions is like having an internship during the semester — for better or worse. He and his fellow manager, sophomore Laura Elsener, got a taste of real-world deadlines when the snowstorms this month derailed their on-campus survey plans.

The campus may have shut down that week, but Kendrick’s students were hoofing it anyway to get surveys completed and delivered to Elsener and Anderson for their research presentation the first class after school resumed.

“We had to adjust to the circumstances, and while every other class pushed their syllabus back a week, it was sort of like a real life business awakening where we couldn’t change the deadline,” Anderson, a junior, said. “We had to cope with the circumstances and get that done.”

This spring, the class will launch its marketing plan on campus that will include events, advertising and social media targeted toward physical science and engineering majors. Their goal is for the FBI to receive at least 100 qualified resumes for its physical science positions. The class members will present their findings and the results of the campaign to their client at the end of the semester.

In a competitive environment where jobs are tough to come by lately, experience with a budget and a client — especially one like the FBI — helps a new graduate stand out said Andy Malis, president of the MGH advertising agency in Owings Mills.

“”A lot of students come here with a project they [did] in school that was not real,” he said. “Almost everybody wants to hire someone with experience — you can’t afford to train anymore. The more real-world experience they have … is going to give them a leg up in the hiring process.”