Lauren Sutton, in green shirt, is a graduate student at IUP who has taken on a significant role in the Athletics Office, under the guidance of Samantha Traini, far right, the interim director of strategic communications and ideation.
Lauren Sutton came to IUP to earn her master’s degree. She will be leaving with more than that –– real-world, hands-on working experience.
Sutton, a graduate student in the Sport Management master’s degree program, has spent most of her first year on campus working in the IUP Athletics Office, specifically in sports information. Because the office has not had a permanent Director of Strategic Communications and Ideation (formerly the sports information director) since last summer, she was asked to take on some of the position’s duties, giving her an experience that she knows will jump off her résumé.
“It’s such a great environment to be around,” she said. “There’s a hands-on approach to everything, which I like a lot. I get to do many things that most students don’t get to do until they’re in the job.”
Those things include keeping statistics during games, writing preview and post-game stories, and being an athletics liaison between the teams and the media. Those are not responsibilities that students often handle in college athletics, but Sutton stepped in and helped an office in a bind.
She has worked games for most of the Crimson Hawks’ teams, including soccer, volleyball, field hockey, football, men’s and women’s basketball, softball, and many others.
Part of Lauren Sutton's responsibilities during basketball season was to keep statistics.
“Lauren has done a great job of taking advantage of this opportunity to work in our sports information office,” said Todd Garzarelli, IUP’s Director of Athletics. “She is getting great hands-on experience that normally only full-time workers get. She has not been shy about learning new skill sets and or running a gameday by herself. Lauren has grown so much over the past year and is destined to do great things in the sports information field.”
Sutton, a native of Butler, came to IUP after graduating from Penn State-New Kensington with a bachelor’s degree in biobehavioral health. She applied to a few universities for graduate school but jumped at the chance to come to IUP because of the reputation of its sport management master’s program.
Once she got here, she landed a position as a student worker in sports information alongside Samantha Traini, the interim Director of Strategic Communications and Ideation. It’s a field she admits she didn’t know much about until she started doing the work.
“This is like an internship in a lot of ways, and it’s been a great experience.”
“Honestly, I didn’t know what an SID was,” she said. “But Sam has been a great help to me. She shows me how to do the things I don’t know, and that makes it fun.”
After she finishes her master’s degree, Sutton hopes to land a college-level sports administration job. She knows she will enter the job field with experience that should help her stand out from the crowd.
“This is like an internship in a lot of ways,” she said, “and it’s been a great experience.”