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Samantha Strejeck earned two degrees from West Virginia University, a Sport Management MS (May 2017) and Strategic Communications with a concentration in Public Relations, minor in Leadership Studies BS (2015). Strejeck talks about her passion for sports, experiences as a CPASS sport management student and her internships with WVU Athletics. Strejeck, who grew up in Annapolis, MD, explains how experiential learning opportunities at WVU helped launch her career in the professional sports industry.

Read below to learn how Samantha Strejeck turned hands-on learning experiences while at WVU CPASS into establishing her career goal in social media in sports and then landing her dream position with the NFL.

An ongoing collaboration with the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute (RNI) and the Human Performance Innovation Center (HPIC), which allows CPASS students to gain practical learning in support of classroom work, has taken another step in growing this unique educational experience and partnership.

Guy Hornsby, assistant professor, Coaching and Performance Science, recently received an adjunct faculty appointment with RNI and the HPIC. "This partnership establishes a more formal relationship between CPASS and RNI HPIC that I believe creates a nice bridge between the two programs. It is particularly attractive for our coaching and performance science students working in the HPIC lab and in sport science roles with WVU athletics,” Hornsby said.

WVU recently welcomed 29 new Fellows to the graduate student community. These first-year Fellows will begin building groundbreaking research projects once they arrive on campus this fall semester. Three CPASS graduate students also received Fellow awards.

Currently, more than 70 graduate students are attending WVU through one of seven highly competitive Fellowship programs. Stellar incoming PhD students, as well as other doctoral and MFA students, are nominated for these prestigious awards by program coordinators.

A group of sport management master’s students shifted their end-of-semester research presentations into a lesson in virtual partnerships — and it’s paying off.

CPASS Associate Professor Floyd Jones explains how the semester-long sport industry partnerships with graduate students worked in the realm of remote collaboration.

The Center for Active WV began with a handful of CPASS faculty who felt called to respond to several growing health crises in West Virginia — crises that involve increasing rates of adult and childhood obesity and all of the accompanying health issues, from diabetes to heart disease.

Eloise Elliott, Ware Distinguished Professor of physical education teacher education, says they saw many other centers around the University having a real impact on communities in the state and beyond and knew this might be one way to move the needle. Lacking the initial funds to create a University center, the faculty launched the College-based version in the hopes of gaining enough financial traction down the road to move into full University center status in the future. Their hope in a nutshell? “To encourage people across the University as well as decision-makers across the state to focus on physical activity,” Elliott says. “It emerged out of a passion for getting more people to become active and improve their lives.”

Although many West Virginia University students are in a virtual learning environment this semester, CPASS Sport Management Club members continue to participate in especially engaging virtual sessions with industry professionals to develop connections in the field they love.

“My goal is to help students learn from industry professionals and to guide them in understanding that everyone’s path is different. Everyone has diverse experiences. We want to take advantage of the opportunity offered through the SM Club to speak with these individuals,” Natalie Gerber, SM Club president, explained.

Thanks to an innovative partnership with the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute and collaborations with WVU Athletics, CPASS students are getting hands on experience.

The new CPASS program in coaching and performance science sprang from the cutting edge of both high-performance athletics and recreational sport. One of the only undergraduate programs of its kind in the country, coaching and performance science offers students three areas of emphasis: coaching and leadership, strength and conditioning and applied sport science. “That is incredibly unique,” says Guy Hornsby, assistant professor of athletic coaching education. “I am not aware of such a push to do this at the undergrad level anywhere else.”

CPASS graduating students celebrated 2020 Mountaineer Graduation Day on May 16, 2020, with all the same excitement and future expectations of previous graduates, with one notable difference. Their experience was entirely virtual. Everyone was invited — graduates, families, current and future students, alumni, faculty, staff and friends of the University. And all came to honor our outstanding seniors.

Upon reflecting on their experiences at WVU, four CPASS students — Garrett Lord, Alisha Barnes, Lucas Facemire and John Foster — shared their achievements.

In today’s job market, an internship is a foot in the door. But how do students find these opportunities during a global pandemic? Campus internships are just one way students are building the connections and experiences they need to be successful outside the classroom. From working with Big 12 teams to learning the ropes alongside facilities pros, our students will be well prepared for their next big step — lifelong careers.

A new study will explore the experiences of international and domestic female faculty members in Physical Education Teacher Education.

CPASS has launched a study unique to the College, one that will take a deep dive into the real-world experiences of female faculty who work in the field of physical education teacher education and who hail from Japan and the US. “We decided to focus on this field because sports and exercise are the places where gender stereotypes, such as masculinity and femininity, are still pervasive, and physical education teachers have enormous power to impact children and adolescents relative to gender equity,” says Emi Tsuda, assistant professor of physical education teacher education and one of the leaders of the study.