08/27/2024
SUNY Cortland’s sport management program is among the best in the country, according to a recent ranking by Niche.com. It was listed as 25th out of 448 schools nationwide.
Not only is that the best in the SUNY system, it’s close to the top 5% among included institutions.
The success is reflected in this fall’s incoming first-year class of sport management majors. At 122, it is the biggest in Cortland’s history.
Those students were selected from a record 1,102 applicants for the program, said Associate Professor Ryan Vooris, chair of Cortland’s Sport Management Department, noting the Niche.com ranking isn’t the first time it was counted among the elite, continuing a history of excellence.
“I think it reflects the commitment we have here in the Sport Management Department to high impact practices,” Vooris said. “Our program is very focused on experiential learning and applied learning.”
A lot of that hands-on education is through projects that give students a semester-long experience where they must create a budget for an actual event, execute that event and then analyze how it went.
Those type of experiences are “high impact practices” according to Vooris, because they give students a strong mix of classroom learning and a chance to use what they’ve learned in a real-world environment.
Recent experiences included students working at the ski jumping world championships in Lake Placid and at the international ice Hockey Federation World Championships.
All sport management students also need to take the department’s event management practicum course, requiring 40 hours of work with Cortland’s Athletics Department.
“We’re fortunate enough to have a top of the line, stellar Division III athletics department with nationally competitive teams and fantastic facilities,” Vooris said. “So, they really get that frontline exposure to the sport management industry.”
Vooris said sport management at SUNY Cortland has a well-regarded reputation that’s taken decades to build. The undergraduate major is itself the oldest among SUNY schools.
“We have more than 5,000 alumni in the field of sport management and I’d like to think that means that the name Cortland means something,” Vooris said. “It’s not a new major that we’ve just started five or 10 years ago — we've been our own department here at Cortland now for more than 20 years.”
That familiarity is an advantage when it comes to companies looking to hire, according to Vooris.
“They worked with someone from SUNY Cortland or interned with somebody from SUNY Cortland,” he explained. "We’re putting a lot of students into the field and hopefully they are good representations of that program. Sometimes your alumni are your best spokespeople.”
It also helps that Cortland has a master’s program for sport management that can be taken on campus or entirely online. It gives students of all kinds a chance at the same education, delivered in a way that fits their pace and schedule.
“That flexibility, that customization, it really allows people that are working full time to be able to complete a master’s degree in two to three years. Or maybe four or five semesters if they want to take more than one class,” Vooris noted.
While Vooris is happy with the continued success of sport management at Cortland, he knows that change happens fast and that they need to keep ahead of anything that will shape future job qualifications.
One newer class focused on e-sports, which has grown in popularity, is just one of the ways the department has modernized.
“We have a lot of students that are interested in social media and analytics, and we want to grow that part of the program,” Vooris said. “Everybody can be a content creator in today’s world and the media landscape has shifted so dramatically in just the last 10 years that I know.”
Almost as important as learning the technical details of their future jobs, Vooris hopes students enjoy a well-rounded time at Cortland that teaches them the ethics and people skills necessary to stand out after graduation.
“I would hope you know they did all that important academic stuff and become leaders in the sport business industry. But I also hope they learned about the importance of getting out and getting involved and being part of a community and being a good citizen.”
Niche compiles its rankings by reviewing a variety of information, including almost half a million reviews from real college students, according to its website. In addition it looks at government sources like the U.S. Department of Education and the National Science Foundation.