Sport management program waits patiently for accreditation
Posted by The Skyliner on February 11th, 2009James Turner
Staff Writer
Validity and quality are always prime concerns in any institute where Christ makes the difference, and now North Greenville University’s sport management program has found a new way to validate its exceptional quality.
Since 2001, NGU’s sport management degree program has been an associate of the North American Society for Sport Management—an organization that ensures the quality and high standards of its members. However, since North Greenville’s NASSM membership expired in 2008, program director of physical education services courses and sport management chairman Dr. Jeff Briggs believes the time has come to step up to a bigger plate.
“Our professional association, NASSM, has moved from just approving programs to full-fledged accreditation,” Briggs said. “They’re accrediting programs now, which is a little more extreme.”
According to Briggs, NASSM has now adopted the standards of the International Assembly for Collegiate Business Education which has allowed them to create a specialized sport management accreditation program.
“We attended the national meetings this summer,” Briggs said, “and decided we were in a position to go ahead and apply for candidacy to seek this program accreditation.”
He was very excited about being accepted to another organization called the Commission on Sports Management Accreditation.
“We got word back from them on the first of January that we are an official member of COSMA,” Briggs said.
With their COSMA membership now in place, North Greenville University is now undergoing the twoyear process of securing their status as one of the very first schools with an accredited sport management program.
“We were the first program in South Carolina to be approved by NASSM,” Briggs said.
For NGU’s sport management program, the journey to accreditation is far from over, however. The next step is obtaining candidacy, then a detailed inspection of NGU’s program and facilities by an accreditation team, then finally a vote to either approve the program for full or partial accreditation.
“It’s a very arduous program,” Briggs said.
Even with an overabundance of steps in the process, Briggs speculates that NGU’s sport management program should be accredited in 2011, “barring no major hiccups.”
He believes strongly in the importance of this accreditation program; not just to bring more students into the school, but to ensure the quality of education those students will receive.
“We are very confident in the quality of this program and the foundation that we stand on,” Briggs said, “and I think having the COSMA accreditation would only further validate that we have a strong program.”