A chance to work alongside students from other universities is an important aspect of the Ontario Sport Management Collective, say professors and students who travelled to Hamilton recently for interactive panel discussions and professional development workshops.

Students in the UWindsor Master of Human Kinetics sport management program joined graduate students from Brock University, Western University, the University of Waterloo and the University of Ottawa at Tim Hortons Field, home of the Canadian Football League’s Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

Following a brief introduction from each program, the morning session consisted of panel discussions with sport executives from Ontario Basketball, the Tiger-Cats, the Ontario Trillium Foundation, and the York University Department of Athletics and Recreation. After lunch and a guided tour of the facility, students broke into groups to address research problems identified during the morning meetings.

Jen Nielson, a first-year master’s student, found the day very beneficial.

“The opportunity to network with people outside our faculty, as well as to compare research that is being done at different universities, was not only very interesting and exciting, but very important for the future of sport management,” she said.

Professor Marijke Taks, who along with faculty colleague Jess Dixon served on the event’s organizing committee, noted that the collaboration between students from different universities was an important aspect of the day.

“The students really enjoyed having industry speakers, the Q&A format and the group work, which required the students to work on a real life problem of a specific sport organization highlighted during the Q&A sessions,” she said. “With the group work, the students particularly enjoyed that they were mixed with sport management graduate students from other universities. The first-year students really appreciated and benefited from being mingled with upper-level graduate students during this group experience.”