{"id":156137,"date":"2019-11-04T08:13:30","date_gmt":"2019-11-04T13:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=156137"},"modified":"2023-06-27T12:46:32","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T16:46:32","slug":"uconn-plays-host-international-sport-mentoring-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2019\/11\/uconn-plays-host-international-sport-mentoring-program\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Plays Host to International Sport Mentoring Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s an Olympian spending time at the University of Connecticut right now and, if you think it\u2019s a Husky basketball player, you are wrong.<\/p>\n

The athlete is Karen Chammas, who represented her native Lebanon in the sport of judo at the 2012 London games, and she is spending late October and early November in Storrs as part of the Global Sports Mentoring Program.<\/p>\n

The Global Sports Mentoring Program is an international leadership development project that was launched seven years ago by the U.S. Department of State. One of its two objectives is advancing gender equity by empowering women through sports, and the other is advancing disability rights. The program is managed out of the University of Tennessee and ESPNw, part of the ESPN family of network that specializes in women\u2019s sports programming.<\/p>\n

Each year, about 15 women from around the globe are selected to visit the U.S. for the five-week program. Approximately three weeks of that time is spent at a host site.<\/p>\n

UConn is currently the only university host, while other institutions include professional sports organizations, collegiate leagues, and conference and sport management corporations. This is the fourth year that UConn has participated, having already welcomed women from Uganda, the Philippines, and Vietnam.<\/p>\n

\"From
From left to right, Laura Burton, UConn professor; Karen Chammas, Global Mentorship Program participant; and Jennifer McGarry, UConn professor and department head, Neag School of Education. (Sean Flynn\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThis program is in alignment with a lot of the work we do,\u201d said Laura Burton, a professor in the Neag School of Education, who specializes in gender issues in sport and leadership in sport organizations, and has spearheaded UConn\u2019s participation in the program. \u201cWe are really involved with some good company in this program like the NCAA, the Big East Conference, the United States Tennis Association and companies like Google. We connect different parts of campus into the visit like athletics and the Women\u2019s Center, so it really has a big reach.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chammas is currently the athletics coordinator at the Lebanese American University, where she also earned her undergraduate degree. She also has an master’s of business administration in sport management from the EU Business School<\/a> in Barcelona, Spain.<\/p>\n