New sports media major added to Jandoli School

St. Bonaventure University announced the addition of a sports media major, with students able to enroll beginning fall 2019.
Aaron Chimbel, dean of the Jandoli School of Communication, said the school has been considering adding a sports-related major for more than a decade.
“It makes a lot of sense because when you look at the university’s identity, the first thing a lot of people associate St. Bonaventure with is the athletic programs,” Chimbel said. “We also happen to have great success from our graduates working in sports media, whether that’s Adrian Wojnarowski, Chris LaPlaca, Rachel Axon or Mike Vaccaro, there’s this long line of people who have been enormously successful.”
Following St. Bonaventure and the Atlantic 10’s partnership with ESPN+, Chimbel said the Jandoli school’s addition of the sports media major makes sense.
“Our students have done sports production with the athletic department for games, so we and the athletic department updated the broadcast facility,” Chimbel said. “A lot of people remember the truck, which was a standard definition broadcast. We were able to identify some donor money and partner with the athletic department to upgrade to HD and have a new facility that’s in the Reilly Center and run direct fiber to the athletic fields beyond.”
Despite the expense, Chimbel said the opportunity to broadcast games is something special St. Bonaventure offers, especially considering the size of the university.
“Students like Joe [Ceraulo], a junior journalism major, are already lead broadcasters on those games getting great experience, as are students behind the scenes,” Chimbel said.
Similar to the current sport studies major, students majoring in sports media will be able to choose a direction they’d like to pursue with their degree, such as sports journalism, sports broadcasting, public relations, marketing communications and sports information. While Chimbel said there are not specific cognate tracks, students can take specific classes to allow the major to be flexible.
The main differences between sports media and the current journalism and strategic communication Jandoli school majors will be the primary focus on sports for upper-level coursework and the flexibility of the major based on students’ interests.
“It will be classes that have ‘sports’ in the title: sports reporting, sports commentary and analysis, sports media relations, sports broadcasting and sports journalism,” Chimbel said. “Rather than taking feature writing, you’d be taking sports reporting, so everything you’ll do in those classes will be geared towards sports.”
Chimbel said current faculty and adjuncts will teach the courses, many of which are taught regularly already, but have not been available as an organized plan of study for a degree.
“There’s always the possibility if the program grows we could add additional faculty,” Chimbel said. “We want to know we have the resources here now.”
Additionally, Chimbel said the biannual Dick Joyce Symposium makes the addition of sports media exciting, and another way to tie in sports to the communication field.
“It’s really great because it’s looking at issues surrounding sports prevalent in society,” Chimbel said. “It’s not just issues on the field, but things like domestic violence and sexual assault. We have a fantastic panel with people from ESPN, Yahoo Sports, New York Daily News and USA Today.”
The symposium will be held Tuesday, April 9, at 11:30 a.m. in Murphy Auditorium.