The University of Delaware‘s Applied Sport Event Management class, with support from the Blue Hen Sport Management Club, UD Athletics and Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, held the first annual Blue Hen Sport Summit and Career Fair on April 25 in the Trabant Student Center.
The event, which featured four panels in the Trabant Theater followed by a job fair in a multi-purpose room, was an overwhelming success as over 300 students registered.
The four 45-minute panels were entitled The Future of College Athletics, Sustainability in Sports, Business Analytics in Sport, and The Business of Sport Betting. Roughly 10 regional organizations were present at the job fair including UD Athletics, the Philadelphia Phillies and the City of Newark.
“It’s great to come back to Delaware. It’s nice to see how much things have changed and how invested the sport management students are with this event. I’m really excited about being here and hopefully giving back to the current students,” said Mike Maglietta, Class of ’12, who is currently regulatory operations manager at FanDuel. Maglietta, who participated in the sports betting discussion, was one of four UD alums to appear on the panels.
“I went to the University of Delaware and really enjoyed my time here, so any chance I have to give back and pass on what I wish I would have known 20 years ago is always great,” said Blake Summerfield, Class of ’06, who is director of business analytics with the Phillies. Summerfield noted that he speaks once a year at a class taught by Associate Professor of Sport Management Timothy DeSchriver. “Any excuse I can use to get back down here, I take it.”
Instructor of Sport Management John Allgood II, who teaches sport management’s event management course, was impressed with the work his student put into the inaugural event.
“You always have anxiety when you hold an event like this for the first time. Are people going to show up? Are panelists going to show? In the end they did. This is definitely a student-driven event. We had 17 panelists and I only got two of them; the students got the rest, and the panelists were impressive all day long. So I’m just very proud of them, running this event for the first time. It was a really fantastic start,” said Allgood, who said the event will be held annually in the spring.
Senior sport management major Andrea Plumser, who served as the event’s general manager and leader of the panelist committee, said the opportunity was beneficial for students’ professional experience and gave them the chance to apply what they’ve been learning in and out of the classroom.
“Many of us have had internships throughout the athletic department and in the field, and have different skill sets, and we were able to use that to our advantage,” she said.
“Since it was the inaugural year, we had no idea what to expect or how we were going to make this happen, so it’s really awesome that we reached and surpassed all of our profit, attendance, and branding goals. Fortunately, the event was a huge success, and I can’t wait to see what future classes do to improve it for years to come!”