Butler’s College of Communication paused its Master’s in Strategic Communication and intends to repurpose the courses for a new program offering. Photo by Andrew Buckley.

LILY O’CONNOR | NEWS CO-EDITOR | lkoconnor@butler.edu 

Changes are coming to the graduate programs offered in Butler’s College of Communication (CCOM). The Master of Science in Strategic Communication program is being paused effective immediately; however, the department hopes to use the structure and course offerings created for the program to launch a new Master of Science in Sports Management program in collaboration with Butler’s Lacy School of Business. 

The strategic communication program is no longer accepting applicants starting in the Spring 2025 semester. The current students will be able to finish their degrees in a teach-out, where courses that are required for these students to complete their degree will still be available to them. 

The sports management program will accept its first 15 students for the Fall 2025 semester and another 15 for the Spring 2026 semester, granted that it is approved by the University Curriculum Committee at the end of November. 

Dean of CCOM Joseph Valenzano said the strategic communication program was not bringing in enough students to keep it running. 

Valenzano, along with CCOM faculty members, decided to pause the program, rather than dissolve it, so they have the option to bring it back or revamp it in the future.

“By pausing it, we still have the courses available to use,” Valenzano said. “If we dissolve it, we’re basically throwing it away. I don’t want to do that. People put in too much work and created such a good program, we want to make sure that we’re looking at ways to leverage that moving forward that will benefit our students.”

In addition to having the courses available for a future re-emergence of the program, the courses will also be repurposed into part of the Master’s in Sports Management curriculum. 

Students in the program were informed of the change on Oct. 3 with an email from Margaretha Geertsema-Sligh, the director of graduate studies in CCOM. The email detailed the courses that would be available and the sequence that they would be offered, as well as a plan that each student should follow for the teach-out.

“Dean Valenzano, as well as the chair of the Strategic Communication Department and I worked together to design a message that we could send out to the current students to let them know, in all transparency, that this program is going to get paused,” Geerstema-Sligh said. “Honestly, I received maybe a couple [of] questions from students, but overall, there were really not a lot of questions. I think people were satisfied with what we sent to them.”

Along with the email, the website was updated letting viewers know the program was not accepting applicants for upcoming semesters. However, there was never a formal announcement, which left students like Olivia Coy, a senior strategic communication major who was looking to continue her education in the master’s program, feeling blindsided.

Coy is disappointed in the pausing of the program but even more so in the lack of communication.

“I had stated my intention to my advisor and other professors to start that program starting last spring, and I was never given a formal announcement of the dissipation of the program,” Coy said.

Coy found out about the pausing of the program during a conversation with a professor when she mentioned planning on starting the program this spring. 

“I probably wouldn’t have found out until about a week ago [if I did not find out on accident], because that’s when the admission timeline opened up,” Coy said. “It’s still listed on Butler’s website. It says that they’re not accepting applications, however, the program is still listed. It’s very misleading, and there wasn’t much communication. It was really disappointing because it left me in a very compromising situation, and I had to pivot very quickly.” 

The Butler Transformation Lab is responsible for gathering data on programs being re-evaluated or potentially added. Valenzano reached out to the Transformation Lab to collect data on the strategic communication program earlier this year in an attempt to find a reason to keep it active. While they could not find data that supported the program, they found data supporting an interest in a sports management program.

Stephanie Hinshaw, the executive director of the Transformation Lab, said that there were many conversations with the Indiana Sports Corps to analyze the demand for a sports management program, specifically in Indianapolis. 

“We spoke with the leaders in [the Indianapolis sports] area to ask ‘What are the plans for Indiana as a leader in sports?’”  Hinshaw said. “‘What are you looking for? What are your pillars? What are your prongs? How might [a Master’s in Sports Management] be able to support it?’”

Hinshaw and Valenzano are enthusiastic about the opportunities a sports management program could offer in a city like Indianapolis.

“I think the program itself also has really great ties to what’s going on in the city, ” Valenzano said. “Indy is a sports town, and the fact that we’re going to launch this really cool, unique, interdisciplinary and very Butler Master’s in Sports Management program just adds to the reason why Butler and Indianapolis should be considered ideal landing places for students.”

Both Valenzano and Geertsema-Sligh agree that while the pausing of the program is disappointing for them and potential students, the prospect of the new sports management program is equally, if not more, exciting. 

They emphasized the fact that the program is geared toward current Butler students looking to continue their education, while the strategic communication program was marketed more toward people looking to come back to further their education.

“The new program, should it be approved this month, is a really exciting opportunity for students across the university, not just CCOM,” Valenzano said. “You could be a strategic communication major in CCOM. You could also be a major in [the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences], you could be a major in the College of Education, you could be major in LSB. There’s a whole variety of ways in which people can plug into this.”