Northumbria Sport Lecturer Voted on to World Sport Board

Photo: Ruth Crabtree (third from left)

For a number of years many of the world’s leaders in sport management have been discussing the development and formation of an organisation that would represent sport management at an international level.  On April 27th 2012, the representative of the six Regional Associations: the North American Society for Sport Management; the European Association for Sport Management; the Sport Management Association of Australia & New Zealand; the Asian Association for Sport Management; the Latin American Association for Sport Management and the African Sport Management Association all voted to adopt the Constitution and officially founded the World Association for Sport Management.

The mission of the Board is to facilitate sport management research, teaching and learning excellence and professional practice.  The Board will be working with many key stakeholders in the sport industry to achieve such aims including: international sport federations, non-government organisations, Institutions of Higher Education and the sport management industry.

Twelve members were officially nominated and elected onto the Board and within those; four of these were elected onto the Executive Board, of which Ruth was one.  She has also served as an Executive member for a number of years on the European Association of Sport Management Board.

After presenting a keynote speech at the Global Sport Management Summit in Taipei entitled “European Perspectives on Sport Management Education”, Ruth commented: “This is a great honour to be able to represent Europe on the world stage….it is also a pleasure to be working with some of the key people in the world associated with sport management.  It is an exciting time and a great opportunity to learn, develop and implement good practice internationally”

The position also provides a great opportunity to promote Northumbria University globally.  The School has a rich history in providing sport management programmes and Ruth as Director of International Development for the School of Life Sciences certainly intends to make use of this, she has already discussed developing links with many other Universities who were present at the Summit and is hoping to secure many more partnerships in the near future.