MBA (Sport Management) Official Launch & Alumni Event

Laurentian University welcomed the first students to its Sport Management specialization in the Laurentian MBA this past Fall. The Faculty of Management held the official launch of the MBA (Sport Management) in the Executive Billiards Lounge, at the Rogers Centre, during the Toronto Blue Jays game.

________________________________________________________________________

Norm O'Reilly, Discussant at Research Centre for Sport in Canadian Society Workshop

Source: http://www.rcscs.uottawa.ca/workshops.htm

________________________________________________________________________

ISM now has a permanent link on bottom right of the Sportlink webpage

Source: www.sportlink.ca

_______________________________________________________________________

_

Laurentian University SPAD helping our cause

The SPAD program from Laurentian University is back for another year to help the cause.

As a part of their third year Independent Project course, four members from Laurentian University's Sports Administration program are developing their administrative skills by helping with the Miners for Cancer 2009 Hockey Tournament. The class provides practical experience through an in-depth relationship with a variety of community and university sports associations (such as this tournament).

SPAD awards an Honors Bachelor of Commerce (Sports Administration) degree. It is a limited enrollment (40/year), fouryear interdisciplinary professional degree that combines an extensive exposure to the functional areas of business with a practical and theoretical exposure to the sport business. Alumni span the four major leagues (NHL, NFL, NBA, MLB), amateur sport organizations, and other businesses worldwide. The SPAD program has been involved with this tournament for many years.

Source: http://www.minersforcancer.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9&Itemid=56

__________________________________________________________________________________

SPAD Hockey Tournament 2009: Professor and staff hockey game

__________________________________________________________________________________

Job Opportunity

The Institute for Sport Marketing (ISM) is seeking a Research Associate for a 4-month, full-time position with possibility of extension.  The position will report to the Director of the ISM and will be dedicated to supporting the publication in peer-reviewed journals of the data resulting from the various ISM research projects.

For more information

 

__________________________________________________________________________________

Atherton U.S. Amateur Gold Championships

__________________________________________________________________________________

 

LU representatives heading to Beijing

Date Published | Jul. 21, 2008
Northern Life.ca

 

It’s been said that the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing will provide the world with an open door to China. For a trio of representatives of the Sports Administration program at Laurentian University, that is too good an invitation to pass up.

SPAD chairman Norm O’Reilly and students Ryan McLeod and Tyler Aird will be among the countless foreigners who will make the trek to Asia in early August, with very different agendas in store for all three.

O’Reilly, who was born in Orillia but spent the bulk of his youth in Lindsay (Ontario), heads up “Canada House," a corporately sponsored initiative that will provide a venue for Canadian athletes and their families to celebrate accomplishments and mingle will business benefactors.

The setting is outside the realm of the Athletes' Village, providing O’Reilly with a different mandate than the one he held in Athens, where he worked far more closely with the Canadian Olympic athletes.

While not an Olympian, Norm O’Reilly was an accomplished triathlete, a veteran of the Kids of Steel circuit and national champion at age 16. While attending to his post-secondary studies at both the University of Ottawa as well as Waterloo, O’Reilly competed  at the OUA (Ontario University Athletics) level in both swimming and nordic skiing.

Originally pursuing a degree in kinesiology and tackling co-op placements with Triathlon Canada, he came to realize that the business side of sport provided a far greater attraction to him. “That’s when I first realized what I wanted to do," he said.

He went on to obtain a Masters in Sports Administration as well as his MBA, eventually picking up a job with the Olympic bid committee in Toronto, gaining valuable experience in the area of event management. He played a key role in organizing all facets of the Triathlon World Cup events staged in the provincial capital in both 2000 and 2001.

Completing a one-year stint as an Associate Professor within the Sports Administration program, O’Reilly returned in 2006 to head up the unique Bachelor of Commerce degree that provides graduates with (as noted on the Laurentian website) the “requisite business skills required by the industry today.”

A developed passion for research has fuelled the move back to the university setting for O’Reilly.

He said, “I never really thought I would be an academic.” And yet it’s clear that he intends to raise the bar during his tenure at Laurentian University, noting in the vision for Sports Administration a “burgeoning research capacity that will complement the program’s applied teaching/industry focus.”

While he very much enjoyed the role he undertook in Athens, O’Reilly recognized that the network of contacts that he would enjoy as head of “Canada House” would prove invaluable to the promotion of the School of Sports Administration.

For both Ryan McLeod and Tyler Aird, the Olympic excursion is heavily slanted towards practical work  experience, with both students working as interns this summer with ISM (Institute for Sport Marketing). Both will be busy collecting data from both the Chinese population as well as tourists, gauging various sentiments from all sources on the impact of the Games at many levels.

One particular study of interest will centre on how companies, who are competitors of prominent Olympic Games sponsors, attempt to capitalize on the two-week event without having the benefit of being directly linked to the Games themselves. Using specifically designed questionnaires, Aird said he would like to gain insight into the “Olympic Games as an event and what it means to be part of the Games.”

“It’s going to be a pretty unique experience," added McLeod, a native of Sault Ste Marie. “Just the opportunity to go to the country is amazing.” Working with ISM over the summer months, both fully understand some of the challenges they are sure to face.

“The colletion of data is difficult,” noted McLeod. “People get bombarded with surveys and don’t always want to take the time to answer them.” Aird agreed that the opportunity to complete research is what drew him to the particular project.

By the time the closing ceremonies of the XXIX Olympiade signal an end to the historic competition on August 24, O’Reilly, Aird and McLeod are sure to walk away from an open house experience they are quite likely never to forget.

Randy Pascal is the voice of Persona 10 Sports and is founder of SudburySports.com.

 

__________________________________________________________________________________

Sports passion earns former native trip to Beijing

Date: 2008-07-31
By Catherine Whitnall, myKawartha.com

__________________________________________________________________________________