Georgetown announced the inaugural faculty for the new Georgetown University Masters in Sports Industry Management program this week, including professors coming from many of the nation’s top sports companies.
Among the new faculty is Brooks Meek, the senior director of Basketball Operations-International of the National Basketball Association; Josh Adler, of the Major League Baseball Office of Government Affairs; and Karen Irish, the manager of government relations of the United States Olympic Committee. Most faculty members are going to keep their current jobs while teaching at the university.
Currently in its first semester, the SIM program has just over 50 students and 25 faculty members, according to Associate Dean Matt Winkler. According to its Web site, the program places strong emphasis on real-world experience, offering students internships, networking opportunities and relationships with industry leaders. Winkler said that 30 full-time students also have full-time internships.
Winkler has extensive experience in the sports industry, previously working for the National Hockey League, the Women’s National Basketball Association, the National Collegiate Athletic Association as the assistant athletics director for public relations at George Mason University, and helping to organize the “Sports Events Marketing Experience” conference for the last five years. SEME is a two-day conference for young professionals and students seeking to further their career in the sports industry, according to SEME’s Web site.
According to a SIM e-mail, the inaugural faculty has over 240 years of collective sports industry experience.
Winkler said that finding this faculty was a great success for Georgetown and the new program.
“The trick was recruiting them and then convincing them of how important this was and how much they would get out of it,” he said. “It’s been a huge success on all fronts so far, and Georgetown has provided outstanding support, and its mission, tradition and strengths in training new leaders has made a big difference for the faculty and the students.”
Chartese Burnett (FLL ’83), vice president of communications for the Washington Nationals, signed on to teach in August. She is currently finishing her first semester co-teaching a class called “Sports PR and Communications.”
She said that she is very excited to join this program, especially as a Georgetown alumna.
“The program is phenomenal, dynamic,” she said. “It is going to be one of the best in the country.”
So far, SIM has been successful, according to Winkler, gaining more interest as the year goes on.
“We received 522 inquiries in the first year alone,” he said. “And [we] are getting calls from juniors in college wondering what they need to do to prepare for [an] application.
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