It all started with a faculty meeting conversation. What was going to keep the University of Alabama at Birmingham innovative and create space for growth? From there, UAB associate professor Mary Ann Bodine Al-Sharif identified the opportunity for a partnership between the kinesiology department and the higher education administration program.
Two and a half years later, the master’s degree program in Higher Education Intercollegiate Athletics Administration welcomed its first cohort of students for the Fall 2026 semester.
“When we were putting the program together, we reached out to some partners in the industry to give us a gauge of what the landscape looks like, what we need to think about,” says Al-Sharif. “One of the things we took into consideration is that this program needs to meet today’s needs, but also needs to constantly be thinking about tomorrow.”
In the ever-changing world of college athletics, the new graduate program at UAB is poised to prepare future intercollegiate athletics professionals to manage college sports programs while also meeting the demands of being a higher education administrator.
“We’re looking not just at the sport itself, but also that integration into the institution,” Al-Sharif says. “If you’re going to be an intercollegiate athletics administrator, then you need to understand institutional mission, how athletics programs align with that mission, governance and shared governance. You need to understand your responsibilities to the institution, finance, ethics and student-athletes as students first.”
One of the first steps in Al-Sharif’s process was to contact UAB’s athletics department for boots-on-the-ground guidance. “We reached out to our athletics department and asked what they thought of the marketability of the program,” she says. “The athletics department said ‘Oh, this is unique. We hadn’t thought of that. This would be a great program.’ They had interest in creating something similar, so there was natural alignment. They were very supportive.”
From that first conversation with athletics came Al-Sharif’s biggest takeaway: communicate early and often. With the backing of UAB athletics and transparency among stakeholders, the program plan was sent to the Alabama Commission on Higher Education for a final review, during which time other state institutions had the opportunity to review UAB’s plan and provide feedback.
One of the most unique elements of the Higher Education Intercollegiate Athletics Administration program is the addition of an esports concentration. Many colleges and universities across the country have implemented esports clubs and even varsity teams, and the logistics, facilities and needs of esports team members can vary widely from the traditional student-athlete.
“As sports continue to change, we can change with it,” says Al-Sharif. “Yes, there are always going to be sports on the field, but sports are virtual, as well.”
That flexibility is imbued into every part of the new program because, as Al-Sharif is quick to say, the only constant is change.
“[These students] are coming in at a time when collegiate athletics is a front-page topic both from a sports perspective as well as from a legal perspective,” says Cody Morris, associate professor of kinesiology at UAB and one of the faculty members working directly with the new program. “There are so many different pathways that this has gone the past few months to years, and these students will be able to receive training that they will directly apply immediately.”
Today’s college athletics administrators must juggle changing legislation regarding NIL and revenue sharing, shifting eligibility rules, and the increasingly common experience of college athletics as a business.
These obstacles were unheard of even 10 years ago, but as the first cohort of students continues through their first-semester journey at UAB, Al-Sharif says that the program’s success will be defined by retention, and seeing students graduate in two years fully prepared to fill openings in the field.
“They have to work through lots of complexity in a rapidly changing environment,” Al-Sharif says. “That is probably the most interesting piece for me when I think about the research and other things that can come from the work we’re doing.”
