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College News
SUMMER 2010 l 6
Sport Management Students Go... Behind the Scenes
Dr. Jurasek and Medaille “Say Yes” to Higher Education Access President Richard T. Jurasek participated in the White House sponsored Middle Class Task Force Forum on higher education access and affordability held at Syracuse University in September 2009. Also in attendance were U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden, U.S. Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and other local higher education leaders. As the only Buffalo-area college to participate in this initiative, Medaille admitted seven students from the Say Yes program to its first-year class for the fall 2009 semester. Medaille’s involvement demonstrates its commitment to providing firstgeneration college students with access to affordable education. Medaille is one of 24 colleges and universities that belong to the Syracuse Higher Education Compact. This coalition has partnered with Say Yes to Education, which works with Syracuse University and the Syracuse City School District, to cover the cost of tuition and books for qualified students. This comprehensive program supports low-income students with tutoring, diagnostic testing, academic programming, summer programs, financial aid counseling and college selection assistance.
Chris Ripley ‘11 EDU photo
On Fridays and Saturdays for the duration of the National Lacrosse League’s season, a handful of Medaille sport management students worked tirelessly through the night to produce highlight reels covering the 11 NLL teams competing in Canada and the United States. This included the hometown team, the Buffalo Bandits, which plays at the HSBC Arena. According to Mark Brownyard ’11 SM, “For the past few years, lacrosse has been one of the biggest-growing youth sports.” With that trend in mind, Medaille’s Sport Management Program entered into an agreement with the National Lacrosse League for the 2010 season, where Medaille students gained first-hand experience about sports marketing and multimedia production in a deadline-driven environment. “The classroom can’t teach you what to do when everything is coming at you all at once,” says Brownyard, referring to the frenzied pace of video feeds and instructions from NLL headquarters. “We have a real sense of pride in this,” he continues, “The NLL has never done this before, and Medaille students are taking it from the ground up.” Brownyard describes the support from Medaille, in terms of access to video software, editing equipment and bandwidth, as “amazing.” “There are so many topics within sport management – it’s more about starting to eliminate the options than figuring out what I want to do,” he shares. “The computer experience is especially valuable.” “The work we have done throughout our first season has earned us credibility with the NLL,” says Dr. Rich Jacob, associate professor of business and director of the sport management program. “They have offered us not only a seat on the board, but we also will be in discussions over the next few months to about our level of involvement. It looks like we will become more involved in assisting the league in the development of their national intern program.” To see the sport management students’ video works, visit www.youtube.com/user/NLL.