Courtney Carter, one of Kentucky’s leading voices in college sport and higher education, has been named to lead Lindsey Wilson University’s sport performance program.
Carter – who brings nearly two decades of experience in higher education, sport management instruction and college athletics research – will oversee Lindsey Wilson’s sport performance major, which is the first in Kentucky and the second in the nation.
The program is designed to document, assess and strengthen learning that occurs through collegiate sport participation, giving student-athletes an academic framework for understanding what they learn through practice, training, competition, rehabilitation and team membership.
“It’s exciting to be on the ground floor of this dynamic new academic program,” said Carter. “This program gives students a way to study what they are already living every day through sport. It helps them understand how sport is science, how sport is education and how sport is art.”
An emerging academic discipline
Sport performance is an emerging academic discipline that transforms the athletic experience into a rigorous form of academic study by giving student-athletes a way to turn competition into deeper learning.
“Sport performance recognizes that sport is more than competition,” said Carter, who is one of the founding members of the national Sports Major Collective, which advocates for the sport performance major. “It is a place where students experience leadership, failure, resilience, ethical decision-making, teamwork and identity formation. This major gives them the tools to study, document and assess that learning.”
Carter said the new major is especially focused on preparing students for careers in the multi-trillion-dollar global sports industry, while also preparing graduates for careers beyond sport.
“This major is the study of science, psychology, ethics and leadership,” said Carter. “Those disciplines prepare students to work in the expanding global sports industry, but they also prepare students for the corporate world because many of the qualities valued by employers are developed through sport performance.”
Grounded in theories of integrative learning, embodied pedagogy, ethical reasoning, intercultural competence and teamwork, sport performance provides students an academic framework in which they critically reflect on their practice, training, rehabilitation and competition experiences.
Connecting experiences to theory
Lindsey Wilson’s 120-hour bachelor of arts degree includes 11 core courses, or 33 hours, and four electives, or 12 hours, that draw on the disciplines of business, communication, English, history, physical education, psychology, recreation, tourism and sport management, sport performance, and women’s and gender studies.
The program will also include four practicum-style courses with 90 hours of structured participation and 750 minutes of classroom-based instruction, which mirror expectations of clinicals, internships and performance practicums in the university’s other academic programs.
“Student-athletes have this concrete experience as members of a team, and in the major they are given the opportunity to reflect on and make meaning of that experience,” said Carter, who played softball in college. “They do not just participate in sport, they study it. They connect their experiences to theory, data and research, and then use that feedback to grow as athletes, students and future professionals.”
Before coming to Lindsey Wilson, Carter was an instructor of sport management at Campbellsville University, where she taught a variety of courses that included sport marketing, sport ethics, stress management, principles for wellness and psychology of sport.
Her research focuses on student-athlete success and retention, culturally responsive teaching and advising, and the sociology of sport.
Carter has presented at regional and national conferences. A Kentucky native, she earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Centre College and a master’s degree in physical education with a sport management emphasis from Eastern Kentucky University. She is pursuing a doctorate in sport management at Troy University.
(Duane Bonifer LWU)