DU’s Graduate School of Professional Psychology (GSPP) has added a new program that is the only one of its kind in the country—The Master of Arts in Sport Coaching (MASC).
“Offering the the MASC in a psychology schools makes the program unique,” said Brian Gearity, Director of the MASC program.
There are sport-based and kinesthetic parts of a coach’s education, but according to Gearity, this program will integrate the kind of psychological knowledge that a coach needs to achieve the best possible coaching outcomes.
Students will have the option of completing the new program entirely online, which Gearity said will be extremely beneficial to the average coach with an extremely busy schedule.
“This program is a good fit to be an online program and I’ve taught an online program like this before,” said Gearity. “The program started because the Sport and Performance Psychology faculty proposed starting this new degree and that program has unbelievable reputation and growth. They do an outstanding job, so I’m lucky to be building off of that success.”
Gearity has been working with the Office of Teaching and Learning (OTL) to develop innovative ways to integrate the new course material into an online class.
“The OTL has been great, as I’ve been working with them and with my own interest in teaching, learning and coaching education,” said Gearity. “I think the way that the courses are structured—with the content, the real-life assignments, the evaluation—the delivery of course material and our engagement with students will all be very innovative.”
Gearity said that, along with directing the program, he will also be teaching several classes in the MASC program. According to Gearity, there are also a number of other instructors already lined up to teach classes such as Psychology of Athletic Performance, Biomechanics, Sport Nutrition, Motor Learning and Sport Pedagogy.
Shelly Smith-Acuna, Dean of GSPP, said, “I got the idea from our Master of Arts in Sport and Performance Psychology faculty. I had heard from them that they had really wanted to offer this kind of program, because when they worked with coaches out in the community, the coaches were asking for more of the information that they could get from DU.”
Once the idea to start the MASC program came to Smith-Acuna, she needed to hire the right person to direct the program.
“I think people working in Sport and Performance Psychology and in Coaching Education see that this is really a good idea, so I think there was a lot of buzz about this being a really interesting, innovative and potentially very valuable program,” she said.
Gearity was hired last September to head the new program. According to Smith-Acuna, Gearity was the perfect man to fill the position and direct the new program.
Recently, Gearity has been busy filling out paperwork so that the MASC program can receive recognition from the National Council for Accreditation of Coach Education programs as well as the National Strength and Conditioning Association. If Gearity succeeds, and he is confident that he will, it will be the only program in the world accredited and recognized by those two national organizations.
GSPP offers many other programs such as a Doctorate of Psychology, a Master’s Degree in Forensic Psychology, a Master’s Degree in International Disaster Psychology and a Master’s Degree in Sport and Performance Psychology.
