Ithaca College’s sports media and sport management programs have been majority male for as long as the college has collected enrollment data. Despite a small population, the college’s community of female students in sports media is on the rise.
In Spring 2022, The Ithacan examined the growing gender divide in Ithaca College’s sports media major.
Since Fall 2017, the number of female students increased from 10 to 27 in Fall 2024. However, the percentage change is not statistically indicative of a trend as the percentage in Fall 2017 was the same (19.6%) as in Fall 2024 (20.2%). This is because overall enrollment in the major increased.
The School of Business’ Department of Sport Management — consisting of sport management, as well as management concentrations for business administration majors — yielded a decrease in the number of female and male students in the major.
Since Fall 2017, the percentage of women in sport management — including both the major and the concentration — relative to total students in the program has increased from 12.9% to 18.8% in Fall 2024. Despite a decrease in overall enrollment in the program, the number of female students increased from nine to 15 in the same time frame.
Mead Loop, director of the sports media program, said it can be hard to attribute this growth to a single factor. He said a possible influence may be aftershocks of what he called the “Caitlin Clark effect.” Clark, the first overall pick in the 2024 WNBA draft, brought new attention to the league and other professional women’s sports. The 2024 season had a 170% increase in viewership from the year before.
“We have rising attendance in person at [national] women’s sporting events, and we have increasing viewership,” Loop said. “That might produce more interest among prospective students.”
Professional women’s sports have also seen the creation of the Professional Women’s Hockey League in 2023, as well as the Women’s Lacrosse League and Women’s Elite Rugby in 2025.
Senior Sara Hunter, a business administration major with concentrations in sport management and marketing, said professional sports were a large influence on her decision to enter the industry. A lifelong New York Mets fan, Hunter said she had vague dreams of becoming manager of the Mets until her season ticket representative made her realize it was a real possibility.
“My ticket rep ended up telling me about how she went to [Syracuse University] and got her sport management degree,” Hunter said. “I realized, ‘She went to school for this, and now she works for the New York Mets, maybe I could do that.’”
Data collected by the Office of Analytics and Institutional Research highlights a gap between the proportion of female students in sport majors and the college. The Spring 2025 undergraduate student body 57% female students, with the Roy H. Park School of Communications and School of Business coming in at 51% and 27.4% female students, respectively. Of the total female students enrolled in the college, 5.2% are in the business school and 26.5% are in the communications school. Only 0.7% of students who are female major or have a concentration in sport management, while 1% major in sports media.
Hunter said that when she walks into a sport management class, she expects to be in the minority.
“Last spring I took Sport Analytics,” Hunter said. “There were [24] people in the class, and I was one of two girls. It has been something that I’ve become used to. … It’s unfortunate that that’s what it’s like.”
Senior Belle Adams, a sports media major, said she faced similar experiences. Adams said that when she starts a new semester, she immediately notices the lack of other women in the room.
“Because I’m in the upper level courses, there’s maybe two or three girls in each class,” Adams said. “But this semester, I’m in Sports Publications, and I’m the only girl in the class. I want to know that there are more girls out there.”
Rachel Madsen, associate professor and chair of the Department of Sport Management, said she has been part of North American Society for Sport Management workshops dedicated to addressing the gender divide. Regarding IC, Madsen said a major problem seems to be a lack of awareness about the department.
“A lot of my female students tell me that they didn’t even know this was a major until they got on campus,” Madsen said. “They were often in a different major and transferred in.”
Madsen said one difficulty in educating prospective students is the way open houses are held. There are specific events for each school, which limits the pool of students and discourages many from exploring programs across multiple disciplines.
Madsen said her next move is to directly reach out to high school athletic departments. She said she hopes educating current high school athletes about the industry will help increase interest.
Adams said that maintaining a support system is an important aspect for increasing the number of women in sport majors. When students enter the sports media program, they are required to take Introduction to Sports Media with Ellen Staurowsky, professor of sports media.
“Dr. Staurowsky gets to mentor the students in the intro class,” Loop said. “I bet that’s a big boon for retention.”
Senior Natalie Descalso, a sports media major, said Staurowsky makes every sports media student feel welcome by sharing internship opportunities, offering advice or having a casual conversation.
“She’s almost like a mom in the sports media department,” Descalso said. “She’s spent a lot of time working with the girls in the major because she’s female, and she’s done so many amazing things in the sports media community. She’s been really amazing for all of us.”
Throughout her tenure at IC, Staurowsky has acted as a graduate chair and professor. When she began teaching, sports media was part of the Department of Sport Management and Media in the School of Health Sciences and Human Performance. Staurowsky recently announced her phased retirement, with a final retirement date in December 2026. Staurowsky declined to comment.
On the student side, Descalso said she provides advice to younger sports media majors as the vice president of the college’s Association for Women in Sports Media. She said she feels encouraged by AWSM’s growth throughout her time at the college.
“A lot more people are coming to club meetings, which is really awesome,” Descalso said. “I remember my first couple years doing it, there were maybe five people coming, which was still great, but we obviously wanted more people.”
AWSM’s GroupMe, formed at the start of Fall 2024, currently boasts 26 members. Madsen said IC used to have a dedicated club for women in sport management before decreased enrollment numbers at the college led to its dissolution. As of Spring 2025 there are 73 undergraduate students in the sport management department, excluding the sport marketing major, which is down from 120 in Fall 2019. Descalso said that while AWSM began as an organization for only sports media majors, students’ majors are irrelevant as long as they are contributing to the community and preparing themselves for the professional world.
In 2021, The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) gave the Associated Press Sports Editors an “F” rating in gender hiring, with the APSE’s staff being only 19.3% women. TIDES’ assessment of gender hiring in Major League Baseball has worsened in the past decade, going from a “C+” to a “C.” In addition, Women’s Media Center’s 2021 Status of Women in the U.S. Media reported that the top 100 sport radio personalities were men.
Despite TIDES’ low rating, the industry shows signs of hope. The number of women employed by APSE almost doubled between 2021 and 2011, when they made up only 11.4% of the total staff. In 2023, the NFL reported “all-time highs” of women assistant coaches, team vice presidents and professional staff. Madsen said she believes this trend will continue.
“The very interesting thing that I’m seeing right now is that [sport] organizations specifically want to hire women,” Madsen said. “It’s been happening over a few years, but all of a sudden, it’s happening. We need to get this info to high school girls and say, ‘Not only is there a place for you, they really want you.’”
The college’s institutional data uses the term gender for its data collection, but was collecting data for sex assigned at birth. Gender identity data was not collected prior to Fall 2022, so to reflect the available data, this article will use the terms “male” and “female” to reflect enrollment based on sex assigned at birth from Fall 2017 through Fall 2024.
This article is only taking into account the two sport degrees that currently exist at Ithaca College as of Spring 2025: the sport marketing concentration — which was a major in Fall 2017 and Fall 2024 — in the School of Business, and the sports media major in the Roy H. Park School of Communications, which began in Fall 2017.
However, until Fall 2018, there was a sport management major in the School of Health Science and Human Performance. There was also a sport media major in the School of Health Science and Human Performance until Fall 2019. Both have enrolled students who are women, and neither major is included in the data in this article.
