Teach the Marketing and Comms Operating System the Industry Runs On
The PESO Model® for Universities is a complete, scaffolded curriculum—five sequenced levels from first-year literacy to a graduate capstone, with the rubrics, lesson flows, and faculty enablement to teach it well.
Co-developed with the S.I. Newhouse School at Syracuse University · Taught at 100+ universities · 1,400+ certified professionals in 15 countries · Used by Fortune 500 brands and global agencies
Your students will graduate into a field that no longer works the way the textbooks describe.
Discovery is changing. AI systems now decide what gets found, cited, and trusted, and they reward organizations with deep owned authority, real earned credibility, and integrated signals across every channel. That’s the PESO Model®. It’s the operating system agencies and Fortune 500 marketing and comms teams use every day, and it’s how modern campaigns are actually planned, executed, and measured.
Teaching it isn’t adding a trend to your syllabus. It’s closing the distance between what students learn and what their first employer will expect them to already know.
A curriculum, not a guest lecture
This is the academic delivery of the PESO Model® Certification—restructured into course levels and built so a prepared instructor can teach it without Gini Dietrich in the room. You get sequenced lessons, integrated activities, applied-readiness assessments, and documented rubrics for every level. Derived directly from the certification used in industry, scaled to academic depth. You’re not assembling slides. You’re adopting a system that already knows what “good” looks like.
Students can define paid, earned, shared, and owned media, and explain why owned is the foundation. Demonstrates readiness through the PESO Audit: a one-page diagnosis of a real organization plus a five-minute defense. Format: 3 lessons × 50 min (≈2.5 hours). Standalone course.
Students can explain the job each channel performs and apply the 11-step owned media framework. Demonstrates readiness through the Owned Media Ecosystem Map: Anchor Hub, subtopics, and base topics, with a tradeoff memo. Format: 6 lessons × 50 min (≈5 hours). Standalone course.
Students can design an integrated PESO plan tied to a business objective and defend it to leadership. Demonstrates readiness through the Integrated PESO Plan: 1,500–2,000 words plus a leadership-panel defense. Format: 9 lessons × 50 min (≈7.5 hours). The on-ramp to certification.
Students can run PESO as an operating system and deliver a complete certified plan for a real organization. Demonstrates readiness through the Capstone: a full PESO Model, plan plus a 20-minute defense before an approved panel. Format: full 8-module certification, 8–12 week cohort. Earns the industry-recognized PESO Model® Certification.
Students can lead Visibility Engineering or Measurement programs at scale inside a client organization. Demonstrates readiness through a Track Final Project: a Visibility Engineering audit and remediation, or a measurement framework defended in a simulated CFO review. Format: specialization track, 6–8 weeks per track.
Repeatable Facilitation, Real Faculty Support
The curriculum is designed so a trained instructor can land every lesson. You get the lesson flows, the integrated activities, the assessments, and the rubrics—and a faculty-enablement path matched to what you’re teaching.
100 and 200 level: Faculty with subject-matter familiarity plus completed Spin Sucks enablement
300 level: PESO Model® certified faculty
400/Graduate level: Approved lead facilitator, per the Spin Sucks rubric.
You bring the teaching. We bring the system and the support to teach it well.
Adapt it to your program. The standards stay fixed.
Faculty partners adapt the lesson flows, examples, and integrated activities to their students and institutional context. What doesn’t change: the learning outcomes, the applied-readiness markers, and the rubric criteria because those are what make the credential mean the same thing everywhere. You get flexibility where it helps your students and consistency where it protects the credential. Both are governed by the Spin Sucks faculty partner agreement.
A credential employers recognize—and the ability to back it up.
Students who complete the 400/Graduate certification earn the PESO Model® Certification, which is the same industry-recognized credential held by 1,400+ professionals in 15 countries, equivalent to the cohort-delivered version. They graduate with a complete, defensible PESO plan built for a real organization, real outputs across all four media types, and a measurement approach they can defend to leadership. Not a line on a resume—a system they can run on day one.
Built with academia, for academia.
The PESO Model® was created by Gini Dietrich and is owned and maintained by Spin Sucks. This curriculum was developed in partnership with the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, so what you teach is both field-tested in industry and academically rigorous. It’s the original, from the source, structured for the classroom.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Every stage is built around documented rubrics and an applied-readiness deliverable assessed against a real organization. The standards are designed to hold up to curriculum-committee and accreditation review.
No. The lesson flows, activities, assessments, and rubrics are built. Faculty adapt examples to their context and complete an enablement path—they don’t author the course.
No. You adapt the flows, examples, and activities to your students. Only the learning outcomes and rubrics are fixed, because those are what make the credential consistent.
The entry levels (100/200) require Spin Sucks enablement; 300-level requires PESO Model® Certified faculty; the certification and specialization levels require approved facilitator or specialist credentials. We’ll map your faculty to the right path.
Stages 1–3 work as standalone courses that stack. Stage 4 is a cohort certification suited to seniors or graduate students. Stage 5 is post-certification specialization. We align the mapping to your levels.
Licensing and partnership terms depend on your program’s scope and levels. We typically charge students a $50 “textbook” fee. Let’s discuss. We’ll scope it with you.
At the 400/Graduate level, yes. The industry-recognized PESO Model® Certification, equivalent to the cohort version.
Bring the industry standard into your classroom
Give your students the operating system employers already run—taught with the rigor your program demands and the support your faculty deserve.