Graduate-Level Professional Preparation for Athletic Directors
The purpose of this research was to design a curriculum for graduate-level preparation of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I and II athletic directors. A survey instrument, consisting of a composite of 41 courses and based on R. Hay's model, Proposed Sports Management Curriculum and Related Strategies, was mailed to the full population of NCAA Division I and II athletic directors (N=569). A total of 307 completed surveys were returned from directors of men's, women's and merged athletic departments. Respondents rated each course using a 5-point Likert scale ranging fromnot important(1) toessential(5). There were 17 courses that were rated very important according to the acceptance criterion of a mean of 3.5 or greater. Results of a 2 × 3 (Division × Program type) factorial ANOVA, with alpha adjusted from .05 to .001 by Bonferroni's contrasting procedure, indicated that there were no differences in determined levels of course importance. It was concluded that a graduate curriculum to prepare a collegiate director of athletics should be implemented through the collaborative effort of an interdisciplinary faculty and that the program should culminate with a doctoral degree.