Jan. 24, 2008
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – University of Notre Dame athletics director Kevin White is the new director of the Sports Management Institute, the executive management program for sports management professionals.
White replaces Mike McGee, longtime athletics director at Cincinnati, USC and South Carolina. McGee, who founded SMI back in 1989, recently retired and had held that same SMI title since the institute began. White spoke at the second session of the 2007-08 program, which opened Thursday in Athens, Ga.
SMI was founded in 1989 by the Universities of Southern California, Notre Dame and North Carolina as a joint venture of the athletic departments and business administration schools of the founding universities. In addition to the founding institutions, the Universities of Michigan, Texas and Georgia currently serve on the Executive Committee and host portions of the Institute. The goal was to create a highly academic, graduate-level business program for athletic administrators.
Over the past 18 years the sponsorship of SMI has maintained its focus on academics and athletics. Beginning with the 1997-98 class, the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) joined SMI as a participating sponsor of the program, and in 2000 the Institute added two additional institutions as sponsors, The University of Michigan and the University of Texas-Austin. Then, in 2006, the University of Georgia was added as a sponsoring institution. These alliances enhance the opportunity for all athletic administrators to advance the knowledge and skills needed in their profession.
The executive program is a seven-month course, which includes 10 days in residence at two of the sponsoring institutions. The program is tailored to meet the needs of athletic administrators in mid-to top-level management positions who are, or aspire to be athletic directors, executive directors or general managers in collegiate, amateur or professional sports.
The curriculum covers a host of key areas for the athletic administrator, both academic and practical — including management strategy, legal and ethical behavior, marketing, media relations and management of financial, physical and human resources. Each component is team-taught by a business school faculty member and a noted practitioner from the field of sports administration. The institute has recruited a distinguished board of visitors who actively participate in the program.
In addition to his new assignment with SMI, White also is the current NACDA president and is a recent past president of the Division I-A Athletic Directors Association.
White has been athletics director at Notre Dame since 2000.
— ND —