Teaching an online course was always something I resisted. Like many of the colleagues I have talked to, I was worried that the lack of face-to-face interaction would significantly take away from the quality of the education for the students. With a class like Recreation Programming, I knew that students needed hands-on experience with running a…

This document highlights numerous ideas that faculty can implement to provide a triple gain, that is, a gain for students, professionals and faculty through collaborative work. We will explore traditional and innovative connections that can be made between recreation professionals, students, and faculty, within parks, recreation, and tourism…

The coming future for parks and recreation education must not succumb to the nostalgia of the glory days of the past. Such nostalgia risks oversimplifying the challenges overcome in the past and challenges faced now and in the future. This paper presents compelling evidence for the repositioning of parks and recreation education. It first frames…

We apply lessons from "Moneyball," Michael Lewis's (2003) best-selling account of the Oakland Athletics's use of "sabermetrics" to find undervalued baseball players to help build a cost-effective team to the context of recreation, park, and leisure studies. Specifically, we coin and apply the term…

This article is intended to provoke thought and discussion about what it takes to be a department chair and what it feels like to be a department chair. To accomplish our purpose, we draw an analogy between test pilots and department chairs based on Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff" (1979). We reason that test pilots and department…

Teaching conservation management means more than just learning about solving complex and difficult environmental issues. Such learning must also consider the likely administrative context that students will end up working in. This article outlines the development of a role-play that uses online technology to teach several administrative processes…

Student-led seminars are commonplace within higher education but few are allowed the opportunity of being delivered in situ. Presentations in situ widen the experience of students and develop a range of transferable skills, encouraging a greater sense of place and facilitating reflective learning. This case study describes the experiences of a…

This is the report of a 1990 review of Recreation, Parks, and Leisure Studies programs at the University of Florida (UF), Florida State University (FSU), and Florida International University (FIU). Among the conclusions are that these programs are essential to the lifestyle of Florida residents and the continued economic growth of the state.…