Meet Claire: Sport management (B.S.'21)

When I first got to Western, it was a little bit complicated because I came here for occupational therapy. It was a five year degree here at the time. Then they changed that. So then I changed my major. And I realize I've been involved with sports all of my life, and it's something that I want to be a part of. So, my goal was to be kind of in the background of sports and then realizing that, I realized sports has a lot of event aspects to them and creating events for the athletes and for the fans and for the community. So I decided that sports management was the right degree for me.

During my time at Western, I had Deb Droppers for a lot of my classes. And she is the most personal person you will ever meet. She has a great story of like where she started and how she ended up here. And she's done so much work for the community and for Kalamazoo. It's great to see. 

And having her as a professor who actually reached out to me for my current job position, you know, that she still thinks of her students even after they graduate is something I really love to see in our professors here.

Kalamazoo has so many fun aspects to it and it's still such an upcoming area. It's amazing town that they're trying to build up for younger people and for families to start being here more. And it's just a beautiful city to be in. And I really think future students would appreciate that if they come here and choose Western as a university.

After I graduated, I worked for the local Kalamazoo Growlers collegiate baseball team for the summer, and then I had to cut that short because I then got to work for the Chicago Bears for an internship. I recently just finished up there and now I'm here at Kalamazoo Experiential Learning Center as a program director.

I was in their community relations department, which pretty much means I did anything that involved outreach for the Chicagoland area. So I would do volunteer work. I would work with non-profits. There was a bunch with at risk youth holiday events and anything that we really needed to do to help out people that needed it.

I really would have loved to have been an event management major when I was at WMU. I realize that would have helped me a lot in my career and what I want to go in my path. So this is a really exciting opportunity for new students. It's going to be very versatile and it's going to be able to have students be able to do so many things with it, whether it's something within sports or event planning, with weddings or catering or anything like that. It's going to be an amazing major that has a lot of aspects to it.