For marketing professor Christy Silverthorne, teaching begins with a simple idea: students often need someone to help them see the strengths they cannot yet recognize in themselves.
Silverthorne remembers what it felt like to sit in a college classroom carrying uncertainty about the future. “I was so stressed out all the time,” she says. “Didn’t think I had this good future and didn’t really know myself or think that I had strengths.”
Those memories continue to shape the way she approaches students today. While teaching marketing skills, she tries to create space for honest conversations about growth, confidence, and life after college. At the beginning of class, she often shares ideas she has been reflecting on herself, whether from books she is reading or lessons she wishes she had understood earlier in life.
“I just want people to know kind of what I’ve learned since college to now,” she says. “Some of those struggles that I think we don’t talk about as much, I just want to be very straightforward so that maybe they can identify, okay, I’m not the only person feeling this.”
That perspective is shaped not only by her own college experience, but also by years working in marketing and communications before entering higher education. Silverthorne, who earned a master’s in communication from Johns Hopkins University, oversees the digital marketing and graphic design programs for Bushnell’s School of Business, Leadership and Technology. Prior to her teaching career, she worked as a media planner and marketing consultant, with expertise in digital storytelling, marketing strategy, and nonprofit communications. She worked with businesses, ministries, and community organizations. In 2017, she entered the teaching realm as an adjunct for Bushnell, and she joined the faculty full-time in 2022.
We caught up with Silverthorne to talk about creativity, learning, and how her own college experience now shapes the way she mentors students.
Teaching Marketing Through Creativity and Curiosity
Although teaching now feels like a natural fit, Silverthorne says she did not originally imagine herself in the classroom. Looking back, though, she sees signs that were already there. “In high school, I remember my friend saying, ‘It seems like you want to be the teacher. You’re trying to teach all of us,’” she says with a laugh.
At the center of her teaching is a deep enthusiasm for learning itself. “I love learning probably more than most people in the world,” she says. “If I’m in a bad mood, sometimes I’ll pick up a textbook and read it.” That curiosity shapes the atmosphere of her courses, where she works to make marketing approachable rather than intimidating.
One misconception she frequently encounters is the belief that creativity belongs only to artists. Students often arrive convinced they are “not creative” because they do not draw or paint. Silverthorne challenges that assumption by helping students recognize the many forms creativity can take within marketing and design. “Actually, everybody’s creative,” she says. “Maybe you’re creative with analytics and data and numbers.”
She also encourages students to think broadly about how marketing skills can be used. Drawing from her own experience in nonprofit and ministry-related communications, Silverthorne discusses how marketing intersects with service, storytelling, and faith-based work. “You can do marketing for a church,” she says. “You can do marketing for these really cool organizations.”
Encouraging Students Through Uncertainty
Much of Silverthorne’s perspective comes from reflecting on her own journey through uncertainty. She remembers feeling “lost” during college and now sees teaching as an opportunity to support students during a similar stage of life. “I feel like it’s a gift from God because I was so lost in college and now, I get to come and help people during that time,” she says.
That encouragement often takes practical form. Rather than presenting success as something immediate or effortless, she emphasizes self-awareness, persistence, and the willingness to grow over time. For students who doubt themselves, her message is straightforward: they are not alone in their struggles, and their future may look far different than they currently imagine.
Silverthorne’s message of self-discovery and growth aligns with Bushnell’s emphasis on holistic education and spiritual transformation. Across academic schools, athletics, campus ministry, and other student programs, Bushnell’s work is centered on helping students find the path God has in store for them.
Within the School of Business, Leadership and Technology, students can study marketing, digital marketing, and graphic design while developing communication and creative skills for work across business, nonprofit, and community settings.