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Since beginning my coursework over four years ago, I have attempted to focus my
Having worked in student services, particularly in collegiate recreation, for five years before
starting my program and continuing to work in the field during most of my studies, the subject is
course, Current Trends in Higher Education (CTCH 792), with the examination of co-curricular
Over the course of my first year (2013-14) of working at Mason as the Assistant Director
of Club Sports, I noticed the importance of financial donations to the sustainability of impactful
co-curricular programming, particularly club sports. After speaking with collegiate recreation
colleagues at several conferences that year, I noticed that club sports alumni were largely an
untapped market for donations. In fall 2014, I focused both my quantitative and qualitative
papers in Research Methods (EDRS 810) on proposed projects that would quantitatively measure
the propensity of club sports alumni to give back to their alma maters and the amount they
donate and qualitatively explore the barriers and motivations for those donations. It was during
this class that I first found the work of Shapiro and Giannoulakis (2009) and Shapiro,
Giannoulakis, Drayer, and Wang (2010), and reached out to Shapiro to receive a copy of the
survey instrument, the Former Student Athlete Donor Constraint Scale, that he and his
recreation continued into History of Higher Education (CTCH 821), where I explored the history
of recreation programs and facilities on campuses and the roles they were intended to play in
student life. In Advanced Institutional and Program Assessment (CTCH 826), I further examined
Methods (EDRS 812), I expanded upon a quantitative research project I had started working on
at Mason Recreation that had identified which students were least likely to visit the department
and used focus group interviews to help understand the barriers that prevented female and off-
campus students from utilizing Mason Recreation’s programs and facilities. This project not only
allowed me to learn more about this student population, but also enabled me to conduct focus
group and individual interviews, and practice my transcription and coding skills. As a side note,
the project also led to an extremely well attended presentation at the 2017 NIRSA Annual
Meeting and to modifications to Mason Recreation facilities and programs, including the
creation of a newly signed trail on campus. Co-curricular student development was also my
subject of exploration in Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (HE 704), in which I designed a
study to assist in helping club sport student leaders recognize the transferable skills they were
learning, and in Leadership in Higher Education (HE 710), in which I argued that
transformational leadership was an effective model to use to help college student leaders develop
transferable skills.
learning, for which a good amount of literature exists, I kept thinking about the future of these
programs and how they would be funded as public support for higher education continues to
decrease. In terms of which potential research project would potentially provide the greatest
benefit to my profession, my project from EDRS 810 stayed top of mind. My coursework has
helped demonstrate to me the benefits of co-curricular learning, as well as the unique nature of
students’ experiences in co-curricular programs. How do those experiences affect future
donations back to the institution? And how do students’ experiences in club sports, specifically,
affect the decision of whether or not to donate back to their alma maters?
As this portfolio review is occurring later than it should, I have had the opportunity to
delve further into these questions. In Advanced Qualitative Methods (EDRS 822), I developed a
potential methods section for investigating these questions. Through this course, I was also better
to have an important qualitative component to the project. As a constructivist, I believe that each
individual creates their own reality based on their experiences; in order to understand how each
In my last portfolio review, Dr. Baker offered to work with me on an independent study
that further explored the research to date on my proposed research questions. This class, titled
Philanthropy and Affinity in Higher Education and Sport (HE 897), allowed me to more broadly
investigate the history of philanthropy in American higher education, the research on motivation
and barriers to philanthropic giving, and factors that influence donations, such as age, income,
and student experience. The extensive literature review that I produced demonstrated a dearth of
scholarly literature on the subject of club sport alumni philanthropic giving and the barriers and
My next steps are identifying potential venues where I might be able to conduct this
research. A key requirement is that the institution has at least 15 years of participation records
for their club sports program to account for previously identified factors that influence donations,
such as age and income. A second requirement is that the institution’s Foundation is willing to
work with me to share their aggregated data and their alumni’s contact information. My
preliminary inquiries have identified Virginia Tech and Duke as two institutions that would
fulfill the first requirement, but I need to complete more work to identify other potential venues.
I also plan to integrate digital tools into my qualitative work on this project, including the
use of qualitative analysis software to assist in my triangulation of data and video recording
methods to assist in interviewing former club sport athletes from wherever they may now be
living. To assist in this, I am currently taking Digital Methods in Qualitative Inquiry (EDRS
897).
References
Shapiro, S. L., Giannoulakis, C., Drayer, J., & Wang, C. (2010). An examination of athletic