Sport Mana major passed by Senate

By Catherine Bratic     5/15/08 7:00pm

Students who sought a kinesiology major with an emphasis on sport management can officially change their majors to sport management beginning this fall.The change, which has been in the works for two years, was approved May 5 by the Faculty Senate. Clark Haptonstall, director of the sport management program, said this major will better reflect the work required of the students.

"Our students are finally able to earn a degree in . their actual program of study," Haptonstall said. "For students to take as many sport management classes as they take and to get the experience that they receive here at Rice, it was important for us to have them major in sport management instead of kinesiology."

The decision was approved by the Faculty Senate in a 10-6 vote in a supplementary meeting. Faculty Senate Speaker Deborah Harter said the Faculty Senate looked into the recommendations of the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee and a special subcommittee formed to research this issue before making its decision.

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"There has been a sense for some time that this needed to be reorganized, that it just is not a structure that works well," Harter said.

Previously, sport management had been nested within the kinesiology major. Kinesiology students could concentrate in sport management and potentially graduate without having taken a single kinesiology class.

Harter, a French professor, said some faculty members expressed concerns about the sport management major being too small of an area in which to focus.

"Most of the senators would have preferred to see a proposal that included a vision for all of kinesiology at once instead of looking only at one part of it," Harter said.

At the end of its meeting, the senate approved the proposal to establish the major. However, it also passed an amendment encouraging the administration to formulate a long-term plan for the other two parts of the kinesiology department-sport medicine and health sciences-and to communicate that full plan to the faculty within the next year.

The sport management program has been on campus since 1980 but has always been part of a different major, Haptonstall said.

"The department change kind of reflects the industry changes overall," kinesiology professor Tom Stallings said. "Because of how [the sports industry] has grown, there's been this demand for people with these unique job skills."

This February, the sport management program at Rice received program approval status from the North American Society of Sport Management. The endorsement is the highest academic honor in the sport management field, Haptonstall said. He said this recognition helped the faculty to recognize the program as a major.

Wiess College junior Tiffany Loggins, who will graduate with a kinesiology major with an emphasis in sport management next fall, said she welcomes the new major since it fits her area of study.

"It just looks better on the degree," Loggins said. "Right now, I'm a kinesiology major. But that's not what our main focus was. I learned sports management, not kinesiology."

Loggins said she might consider changing to the new sport management degree if she has the time.

"I've taken almost all of these classes already," she said.

Haptonstall said that he expects the overall number of sport management students to increase as a result of the change.

"We think that our numbers are going to increase because of the increased visibility of the major," Haptonstall said. "One issue that we have had, when you would look at Rice Web sites or the general announcements, was that sport management had no presence or a very limited presence."

Haptonstall said the numbers will jump when students find out about the major.

Stallings said he viewed the decision as legitimizing.

"The approval provides for us the knowledge that some of the efforts we're doing here on behalf of the students are acknowledged by the faculty senate and the university," said Stallings.

Harter said the new major brings up concerns for the university to consider in the future.

"I think that it is important to be open to all kinds of majors and fields of study at Rice, but I also feel we need to be very sure that all the programs we offer are rigorous and rich in what they offer to our students," Harter said. "What will be very important with this major will be to watch how it grows and develops and to be sure that it challenges our students in all the exciting ways that we hope all of our majors are challenging our students.

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