Purdue trustees OK sport management master's degree; plan moves to state board for final OK

Purdue trustees OK sport management master’s degree; plan moves to state board for final OK

Posted by author February 13, 2025 Sports

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WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Even if you’re a seasoned visitor to Mackey Arena, say, you might not pay much attention to all of the activities beyond Keady Court.

But between Purdue sports and the solid reputation of nearby Indianapolis as a sports hub, a new master’s degree program Purdue’s trustees recently approved seeks to capitalize on growing sports career opportunities.

“You don’t know what you’re doing until you’re doing it,” Jeanne Boyd, executive director of sport management with Purdue’s College of Health and Human Sciences, said about the program’s intended hands-on component.

The master’s program will require final approval from the Indiana Commission of Higher Education, which is slated to next meet March 13 in Indianapolis.

The program, which will initially be run by Boyd and Patrick Tutka, clinical associate professor of sport management, will accept about 35 students with bachelor’s degrees in any field for the fall, they said. The plan is to expand to about 70 students the following fall, with an eventual cap of about 100.

The curriculum will include about 36 credit hours of classwork and 450 practicum hours, mostly in Indianapolis, and should take about two years. Purdue and Indy Sports Corp. have agreed to allow students to conduct research and job-shadow, Boyd said.

Purdue Athletics officials have been supportive so far, and officials in the cities of West Lafayette and Lafayette have been helpful, Boyd said. Indianapolis and its many venues will be useful teaching sites, too.

“There’s something about Indianapolis that you say, ‘Wow, this should be the sports hub of the country,'” Tutka said, pointing to the popularity of the WNBA, the Pacers, Indy Sports Corp. and the Speedway in addition to world-class facilities, the walkability of downtown and the number of friendly volunteers available. And the NCAA is headquartered in Indy. “All this has turned it into a dominant force.”

Boyd was manager and director of the NCAA’s Final Four from 2004 to 2015, and her role is to teach more of the practical considerations of sporting events and how facilities operate, such as the efforts needed to alter Gainbridge Fieldhouse from a basketball arena one day into a football field the next.

Topics will include ticketing, marketing, sports analytics, sports medicine, moving people in and out of facilities, sales and sponsorships and venue management.

Boyd and Tutka, both hired in August, are the only full-time employees for the interdisciplinary program now but said the plan is to hire adjuncts with experience in the business, which is projected to only grow in the coming decade.

In addition to the four current classes offered in HHS, the curriculum will include academic collaborations with other departments, such as the School of Science and Department of Computer Science, including “two courses specific to/for our program – (1) Sport Analytics and (2) AI and Technology in Sport,” Boyd said in an email. “We will, in turn, have a 4+1 option so that CS students can take our core courses on top of their CoS degree and graduate with two degrees.”

Two other Indiana universities have similar programs, officials said, but one is not accredited, and the other’s coursework is all online.

“We all know how fundamental sports are to Indiana and the Indianapolis regional economy. And we all know how much our own collegiate athletics and sports landscape is changing from amateur and collegiate to professional,” Provost Patrick Wolfe said about Purdue’s chance to grow programs related to the sports economy. “There’s huge potential to build on this. … We see this as just the first pebble in the pond.

“There will be a bigger, bolder launch associated with some interesting public activities that are due to be in Indianapolis in the coming couple of months,” Wolfe said. “I would expect that we will be coming back again with other offshoots and additions in due course.”

Trustee JoAnn Brouillette said Indiana and Purdue have an athletics brand.

“To me, the strengths of Purdue and our state, we’re at the cusp of something I think really big,” she said of “sports academia.” “This is our space.”