UMass Club Management Education

Entry Details

The University of Massachusetts has long taught a club management course, called HTM 336 Club Management in its accredited program of Hospitality and Tourism Management, now located in the Isenberg School of Management (Business School).  The course now reaches a broader cross section of students, not just from hospitality, but from other majors in the college such as accounting, finance, operations and information systems, marketing, management and sport management.  Students may specialize in club management but we are also reaching a new group of students who are taking the course as an upper level elective and want to know more about the club management field.  Each year we have worked to bring in new topics areas including tournament event manangement,  new case study topics,  club benchmarking, and marketing concepts such as branding and web design into the course.  In the last three - four years we have worked with MembersFirst of Wayland, MA where we have placed several students who have become project account managers and now product owners of speciality web design products for clubs.  Specifically, we have brought Sean Bleyl, Client Development Executive  into the course to lecture about web design, marketing and design inspiration as we integrate this lecture into our marketing lectures about how marketing in clubs is uniquely different than in private for-profit business.

Implementation

The idea was implemented in the HTM 336 Club Management course over the last few years and was not just a straight lecture.  It was a highly interactive engagement where students learned about the services that MembersFirst performed with numerous web site examples, member on-boarding examples, how MembersFirst is part of the Jonas software vendor of different services to clubs and how the overall design and marketing application works in clubs.  Students work interactively to review non-club sites and club sites to analyze branding messages and promises to determine what works and what does not work.   Students work to identify the marketing concepts and then apply them is a critique of a club of choice or if wanted a designated club such as the UMass Club in Boston.   The reactions to this lecture have been overwhelming positive.  Student feedback and comments have been shared here.  In fact, the class has become so popular that MembersFirst has been invited to present to the UMass Isenberg Marketing Club and the UMass HTM Social Media class over the course of the last two years on similar and expanded topics of design inspiration in web design and implementation.