KU Online Sport Management Faculty

I'm Dr. Calvin T. Williams Jr. I'm an assistant teaching professor in the online graduate master's program of Sport Management. I'm also the program director for that program. I oversee the program from every aspect that you can imagine. So when someone submits an application, I review the application for admission, submit it to my other faculty members within the program, make sure that it goes through the process of evaluation, and I also design our facility and event management course and oversee the curriculum that goes into that. I teach sport facility and event management, an undergraduate section and two graduate sections. And then I also oversee our internship and our independent study courses within our master's program.

I like the rich program history and tradition that's associated with the brand, particularly some of the most notable names attracted me to KU. And then I love the overall community, how everyone within the community, whether they're in the program or not, whether they're enrolled at KU or not, they associate themselves with the brand. And it reminds me a lot of my undergraduate experience as well. I really like associating myself with the brand. I really like how everyone in the community associates themselves with the brand in itself, and it reminds me a lot of my undergraduate experience. It was the same way at that institution.

When I started researching, doing my background research on the institution, I read over the mission statement and the vision statements, but it was when I got to the values that are encompassed here at KU, that's when I was really intrigued. Integrity and respect were the first two, and that really caught my attention because that's something, integrity, that I'd like to be associated when anyone speaks about their interactions with me as a person when I'm not in the room. Respect is something that I think about when having interactions with anyone, and that's something that I think the world can work on as a whole in giving respect to anyone, regardless of their title, their status in life, or what they've done, where they are in life. And then excellence comes with itself. I think that that's something that really should be worked on on a daily basis, and that's something that I try to instill in anyone that I come across, particularly my students, that you strive for excellence every day in everything that you do. The way that you do one thing is the way that you do everything. I always went by a personal mantra of, "Believe in yourself, for your dreams are achievable goals."

My passion is in self-development, and that's whether it's personally or seeing others within their own self-development. I love, I absolutely love seeing individuals setting goals for themselves and doing whatever's necessary in order to reach and fulfill those goals. From an education standpoint, I think for many, education is the needed tool for advancement in life, and I just love seeing people take that step to learn more about whatever their aspirations are and fulfilling those goals. My journey with education wasn't exactly linear, so I started at community college, Durham Tech Community College in Durham, North Carolina, where I earned my Associate of Arts in General Education. I was still figuring out what I really wanted to do, and I enrolled in a four-year institution and was an athlete at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, North Carolina. Aggie Pride! And that's where I earned my Bachelor of Science in Journalism and Mass Communications, specializing in public relations. And then I pursued a professional athletic career for a few years and returned to get my master's degree from Concordia University after I had developed my interest in sport management in sports leadership. And that's also where I got my doctorate degree of Business Administration, specializing in leadership and innovation. I have several. I was born in Alexandria, Virginia, and spent the first part of my youth there, and once my father retired, he relocated us to his hometown, which was Gastonia, North Carolina. And I spent the latter part of my youth years there in middle school and high school.

Yeah, several interesting stories as it relates to, I guess, physical fitness and my interest in physical fitness as a hobby. Several years ago, I took about 16 weeks where I didn't miss a beat, and I trained for a men's physique competition, and I had never done that before, and I entered the competition and I won first place. Second, I would say to stay active, I participate in Masters track and field, and just a few years ago, I was ranked top 10 nationally in several sprinting events for my age class. And prior to that, I would say my interest in sport management actually began with a chance visit to the Kansas City area. And I was trying out for an arena football team at that time, and it brought me to the Kansas City area, and it never really materialized. And it broke down during the negotiation phase, and I thought some things could have been handled differently during the negotiation phase. So that's what interested me in the business side of sport. I said, "Well, I probably can start looking into becoming a sports agent." And if we fast-forward a few years after that, I started an independent agency for myself, and I started working with guys that were off the radar, so to speak, of professional levels, and had some success in representing several athletes that were drafted from Mexican football league, the Liga de Fútbol Americano is the name of the league, into the Canadian Football League. I had clients that progressed from the CFL to the NFL, and then I had numerous clients that had no NFL experience or interest initially, and they went on to play various levels of professionals as well. So I can speak all day about some of the lived experiences that have been pretty cool and have gotten me into the position here at KU. And hopefully the students here are open and love the ideas that I share based upon those lived experiences.