A group of Kent State University students will spend their spring break learning about the business of the Olympics, spending time in Italy and Greece and attending the 2026 Milan Cortina Paralympics.
Mark Lyberger, Ph.D., professor, director of the Center for Sport Innovation and assistant to the director of the School of Foundations, Leadership and Administration in the College of Education, Health and Human Services (EHHS), and Jennifer Ray-Tomasek, Ph.D., assistant professor and professional studies program coordinator in EHHS, designed the advanced sports administration course.
“We try to provide the opportunity for experiential learning, or field-based learning experiences,” Lyberger told Kent State Today. He also takes a group of students to the NFL draft each April.
The timeframe of the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics from Feb. 6 to 22 prohibited taking the group to the actual games, but departing in March allows for a more in-depth program in the two countries, he said.
The course is three credit hours and includes some classroom time before and after the trip and a capstone project at the end. It is designed to explore the complex and dynamic commercial ecosystem surrounding the world’s most prominent sporting event.
The Olympics are a huge multinational event that involves many topics, including economics and revenue streams, marketing and sponsorships, and policies and rules of the Games, Lyberger said. The eight-week course covers many of these areas, as well as the historical evolution of the games, their governance structure, and the strategic operations that drive the modern Olympic movement.
Alaina Thigpen, a senior from Niles, Ohio, said the course and trip tie together her major in sports administration and her minors in international business and marketing.
“I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to see how they bring such a mega event together – all the athletes, coaches, everyone involved – to one city for the month and to see the behind-the-scenes of how it is put together,” she said.
Bella Borros, a sophomore biology major, said she was in Paris before the summer Olympics in 2024, and thought the experience of going to Milan Cortina after the Winter Olympics would be a great opportunity to see the games from another angle.
On the trip, students will have the chance to engage with industry practitioners, participate in experiential projects and analyze real-world case studies related to Olympic planning, marketing, finance, operations, politics, policy, media, and technology, Lyberger said.
Students in the course will begin at Kent State’s Florence Center and then travel to Milan, where they will attend a Paralympic hockey game, before departing for Greece, where they will tour historic sites of the Olympic Games
The Paralympic Winter Games, which take place March 6 to 15, also in Milan and Cortina, are a major international multi-sport event for athletes with disabilities, which is what drew Payton Stasko, a first-year student from Fredericksburg, Ohio, to the spring break trip.
Stasko joined the trip because she felt the itinerary fit well with her major in speech pathology and audiology.
“I chose the course because we are seeing the Paralympics and a lot of my major has to do with those who have disabilities,” she said.
Stasko said she was looking forward to seeing how the Paralympics showcase the abilities and capabilities of athletes with disabilities.
Ray-Tomasek said she hopes that attending a Paralympic hockey game will provide a broader vantage point on athleticism. “We have this opportunity to have a very different perspective on disability and ability and what that can look like,” she said.
