{"289191":{"#nid":"289191","#data":{"type":"news","title":"McDonald Heads Initiative in Sports, Society, and Technology","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EA coach \u2014 that\u2019s what \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.iac.gatech.edu\/faculty-and-staff\/faculty\/bio\/mcdonald\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003EMary McDonald\u003C\/a\u003E dreamed about becoming when she was a little girl. And for about nine years of her career, she made that dream a reality.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMcDonald came to the Ivan Allen College in the fall of 2013 to head the new initiative in sports, society, and technology in the \u003Cstrong\u003ESchool of History, Technology, and Society\u003C\/strong\u003E (HTS).\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u201cI was a college basketball player, so it made sense to go into coaching collegiate women\u2019s basketball,\u201d said McDonald, the Homer Rice chair in sports and society in HTS. \u201cWhat I really loved was to get to see people learn and progress. What I didn\u2019t enjoy was recruiting.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMcDonald always felt students should attend a university because it was a good academic fit \u2014 not because of athletics. She was also a \u201cbudding sociologist\u201d who was increasingly interested in the implications sports had on society.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cSo, I left my position as head coach of the women\u2019s team at Bemidji State University to go to the University of Iowa and earn my Ph.D.,\u201d McDonald added. \u201cSince I grew up in the era right after Title IX was established, I was really interested in how gender impacts sports, so that became my research focus and has been for more than 19 years.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAfter spending several years teaching in the Sports Studies Program at Miami University in Ohio, she arrived in Atlanta in the fall of 2013 and has already been successful at creating an academic minor in sports studies for undergraduates. In addition to working with students, teaching an undergraduate course on gender and sports, conducting research, and serving on various institute committees, she works to connect people at Tech who are doing sports-related research and put together panels and lectures that highlight this research.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cHave you ever stopped to think about the fact that sports are one of the last areas of our society that are segregated by gender? Thinking about the whys of this is what fascinate me and led me to focus on this question of how gender and sports influence each other,\u201d said McDonald, adding that \u201cfor most universities, college sports aren\u2019t a huge moneymaker. As a matter of fact, only a handful of universities bring in more money than what they spend on their sports programs.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMaking the transition from coaching to teaching was the greatest risk I\u2019ve ever taken. I didn\u2019t know if people in higher education would take me seriously \u2014 but thankfully, they did.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EA coach \u2014 that\u2019s what \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.iac.gatech.edu\/faculty-and-staff\/faculty\/bio\/mcdonald\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003EMary McDonald\u003C\/a\u003E dreamed about becoming when she was a little girl. And for about nine years of her career, she made that dream a reality.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"A coach \u2014 that\u2019s what Mary McDonald dreamed about becoming when she was a little girl. And for about nine years of her career, she made that dream a reality."}],"uid":"27889","created_gmt":"2014-04-08 13:09:31","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:16:11","author":"Beth Godfrey","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2014-04-08T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2014-04-08T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"276671":{"id":"276671","type":"image","title":"Mary McDonald","body":null,"created":"1449244151","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 15:49:11","changed":"1475894968","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:49:28","alt":"Mary McDonald","file":{"fid":"198792","name":"mcdonaldphoto.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/mcdonaldphoto_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/mcdonaldphoto_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":700078,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/mcdonaldphoto_0.jpg?itok=T1YSqRUn"}}},"media_ids":["276671"],"groups":[{"id":"1281","name":"Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"713","name":"Gender"},{"id":"167044","name":"society"},{"id":"167014","name":"Sports"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}