Professional Masters Degree

Professional Masters Degree
Courses
Sports and Entertainment Student Association

Professional Master’s and Online Certificate Programs in Athletics Governance

The Athletics Governance Professional Master’s Program (AthGov-PMP) will focus on graduate education for early-stage professionals interested in careers in the area of athletics governance. This program is designed to provide students, especially current and former elite athletes, with the education and skills to leverage their backgrounds to attain careers in sports governance. Graduates could launch careers in organizations such as the NCAA, college athletic departments, high school sports associations, the International Olympic Committee, sports-specific organizations like FIFA, and drug-testing entities like WADA. This degree will enable graduates to better understand and shape the rules, values, institutions, and organizations that govern sports, the world over.

The professional master's program will be highly exclusive, intellectually rigorous and practically oriented. A 12-month, 30-hour program – August 1 to July 31 – it will emphasis the following proposed
specializations:

  • Sport Governance (sub-specializations in: NCAA & Olympic/International governance 1)
  • Athletics Performance Regulation (sub-specializations in: Anti-doping; Paralympics; Analytics)
  • Joint Degrees at CU Boulder:
    - Athletics Governance & Business (AthGov/MBA);
    - Athletics Governance & Law (AthGov/JD);

The AthGov-PMP will be offered and overseen by the SGC within CU Athletics, and domiciled in the Graduate School. A 9 credit-hour online certificate in Sport Governance will also be offered.

Curriculum
All students will begin by taking a 4-hr ‘Augmester’ course, held in the form of a workshop. Students in both the Sports Governance and Athletics Performance specializations will take 3 core courses (9 hrs), 4 electives in their area of specialization (12 hrs), and complete the degree with a summer practicum with a project deliverable conducted with a program partner (5 hrs). Within each specialization, students will take a set of required courses to fill their sub-specialization requirements. The program will draw on faculty expertise from across CU-Boulder.

Rationale
While sports management programs currently exist at a range of universities, typically affiliated with business schools, an athletics governance program is unique. This program prepares students to work with and around the institutions that govern sports. While this necessarily touches on the business of sports, this degree is not about managing sports businesses. The number of these organizations, not to mention their influence is massive. Second, this degree program is implemented by CU-Boulder’s CU Athletics. This is not only unique in organizational terms, but also serves to build a bridge to tie CU Athletics closer to the academic mission of the university. The AthGov-PMP will provide benefits to the campus, students, and CU Athletics. In addition, this program provides significant opportunities for partnerships in support of the program.

Timeline
The AthGov-PMP will begin classes in Fall 2018.