Study away with the University of Kansas

0:00:09.2 Jordan Bass:
My name's Jordan Bass. I'm the Department Chair of Health Support and Exercise Sciences at the University of Kansas.

0:00:13.9 Taylor Ashford:
My name is Taylor Ashford. I am a member of the Atlanta Hawks Organization. I work as the coordinator in the corporate social responsibility department, recently graduated with my master's at the University of Kansas in sports management. Go Jayhawks.

0:00:27.0 Jordan Bass:
We've been studying abroad or studying away now for four years with our undergraduate and graduate programs here at KU and sport management, and our real goal is to try and get our students experience, experience they can put on a resume, experience they could write about when they apply for a job and all these different settings.

0:00:45.1 Taylor Ashford:
On a personal level, it definitely instilled a lot more confident to me. I was already, I had recently started with the Hawks a few months before the study away, so I was still fairly new to the industry. I was still kinda building my network, building that confidence. So I would say that experience for me personally, just kinda, it helped refresh me, kinda take a little bit of pressure off of me, really help me get my mind right, focusing on next steps and just what I wanted to do. But definitely just kinda put that confidence in me that like, okay, you can do this. You can do this in the PGA, you can do this in the NBA, you can do this at NCAA, so, many levels.

0:01:25.5 Jordan Bass:
For the study away program, we most recently did, we went to Hawaii and worked seven days at a PGA Tour golf tournament, and then also learned about different sporting cultures in those areas. And so it's really two-fold, one, like I talked about, to give them experience but two, also to really immerse them in the culture.

0:01:42.9 Jordan Bass:
So when we've gone to New Zealand in the past, they've learned how to play rugby and cricket, and what the youth sport culture looks like in different communities, in different areas. I guess for many of our students, they've only been exposed to the American sporting system, and it's very unique and largely different than the rest of the world, and so getting them exposure to all those different areas and all the different areas of sport that exists across the world and across even the states is usually our main goal or objective or what we go into these programs trying to build upon.

0:02:12.5 Taylor Ashford:
During the program, you work with people in your class on different projects, usually on Zoom though, so coming together, being able to meet some of my classmates, being able to meet different people in the program that I may not have had class with yet, it was amazing. 'Cause yeah, we did feel like a real sense of community, me and talking, me being a master's student, but also being able to work with like the underclass men, being able to like, I was already working in sports at the time. So like, them asking me for pointers and just picking my brain, me kind of picking their brain and some of the other master's students, just kind of, us all forming that bond that we still shoot texts. I still kinda hit them up on LinkedIn and ask them if I see somebody doing something great, I'm always down to come in, post, share, so it kinda brought it all. It was a great tie in for me 'cause they brought it all together, it really made me feel like I was really... I always felt like I was KU family, KU has done amazing things for me. But I really got to bond with a family in person, which was great and I appreciate that, for sure.

0:03:16.6 Jordan Bass:
For me, just the opportunity to be able to get a group of students from our online program together and get to meet them face-to-face and see them interact and get to learn about their dreams and what they wanna do, super impactful. But also to be able to see their drive and personalities out there in the workplace makes it a lot easier now, and I get reference calls for people that say, "Yeah, I've seen this person working this many hours and doing this amount of creative work for these groups," and so it's really helped me too, I think, to be able to speak to our students, advocate for them, have conversations with them about what they're good at and what they wanna do, and really trying to help them as they develop their careers and their career paths. It's allowed me in a lot of ways, to see their skills up close and also try to be able to be a good mentor to them and see what they're doing, both in the classroom, but now also out in the actual field.

0:04:10.1 Taylor Ashford:
If you got the time, you got the resources that you can make it work, definitely try. I would give it a chance. It's an incredible program and they have it set up for you. You staying somewhere nice, you're gonna have a great cultural experience, but you're also gonna learn a lot, and you're really gonna make some career moves and opportunities to get some experiences that are gonna change your life and your career for sure.