The UCF College of Business Administration’s DeVos Sport Business Management Program hosted its inaugural ESPN Executive in Residence program from February 19-21 with ESPN’s Executive Vice President and Executive Editor John Walsh. He joined ESPN in 1988, overseeing the launch of ESPN The Magazine and ESPN Radio, as well as shaping various news and information segments across the network and its properties over the past three decades.
Flying down from Bristol, Connecticut, Walsh spent a jam-packed three days with the sport business graduate students and students taking the sport business minor. Walsh also presented to and dined with local alumni. In addition, he spoke to an undergraduate class, had one-on-one meetings with the graduate students, observed case study presentations in Program Director Dr. Richard Lapchick’s Moral & Ethics in Sport graduate-level course, and attended a DeVos Distinguished Speaker Series event with Nancy Hogshead-Makar, three-time Olympic swimming champion and senior director of advocacy at the Women’s Sports Foundation.
The ESPN Executive in Residence Program provides unprecedented access to the “World Wide Leader in Sports;” it is the only program in the country that ESPN has a relationship with. In future years, a senior executive will spend approximately a month with the students. The DeVos Sport Business Management program has been named one of the top five in America by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, ESPN The Magazine, and Forbes.
The UCF College of Business Administration (UCF CBA) is the second largest college at the University of Central Florida with more than 8,000 students. The college provides a full spectrum of undergraduate and graduate degree programs including Accounting, Finance, Marketing, Management, and Economics. In addition, UCF CBA has nationally recognized programs including the Institute for Economic Competitiveness, Business in Ethics, Dr. P. Phillips School of Real Estate, Professional Selling Program, DeVos Sport Business Management Program, and the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership. The College of Business is an accredited business school by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). AACSB accreditation ensures students and parents that the business school is providing a top-quality education. It also ensures employers that AACSB-accredited business school graduates are ready to perform on day one.