George McClellan
Esports has to be student led tSports, traditional sports. You have student leadership organizations, right? I mean, you have like student student participants, I don’t call them student athletes because of the sort of racist history of that phrase. But but the student participates to student participants in traditional athletics, you have leadership councils, you have team captains, you have all of that sort of thing. But they’re not driving that show. It’s very clear who’s driving? It’s the head coach. Right? It’s the ad. It’s the conference leaders, it’s the presidents of institutions, in eSports, could better be your students or your done? That’s just the bottom line. You got to see yourself as facilitating, not directing. I think that’s essential.

Glenn DeGuzman
Hello and welcome to Student Affairs NOW the online learning community for Student Affairs. I’m your host, Dr. Glenn DeGuzman. I am joined by our panelists who are part of the growing eSports community on colleges and campuses nationwide and excited to be able to talk to them about this phenomenon and its continued impact on college campuses. And I just spent considerable time with them right before we started recording, and I’m loving the conversation that we had before we started recording. So I’m really excited about what is going to emerge in this conversation on Student Affairs NOW. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and online learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays, and you can find details about this episode, or others in our archives at studentaffairsnow.com Quick shout out to our sponsors for today’s episode. This episode is sponsored by Vector Solutions, formerly EverFi, the trusted partner for 2000 Plus colleges and universities. Vector Solutions is the standard of care for students safety, wellbeing and inclusion. And this episode is also sponsored by Stylus publishing, visit styluspub.com and use the promo code SAnow for 30% off your purchase and you also get free shipping, which is always a good thing. So stay tuned at the end of this podcast for more detailed information about each sponsor. All right, let’s get started. My name again is Glenn DeGuzman, I’m the Associate Dean of Students and Director of Residential Life at the University of California Berkeley. I use he him his pronouns. I’m zooming in from Livermore, California, which is the ancestral home of the unceded territory of the Aloni people. This land continues to be of great importance to this present day. So let’s meet this awesome panel. We have Dr. George McClellan from the University of Mississippi. Welcome George. Kaitlin Teniente from St. Mary’s University of San Antonio, Texas. Hello, and we have Mike Aguilar, aka Moog for the University of Oklahoma. Welcome to the podcast. I’m so excited to get started. And in the spirit of gaming, let’s start with a little bit of character development. So I’m hoping that y’all can introduce yourselves a little bit more fully and just tell the audience a little bit more about you. And because you know, I’m sporting my Cal eSports shirt. I love playing video games growing up, I’d love to hear your favorite game, online game or video game when you’re growing up. So let’s go ahead and get started. George, why don’t you kick us off.

George McClellan
I’m George McClellan. I’m a professor of higher education at the University of Mississippi I use he him his pronouns. And I’m glad for the opportunity to learn live in love and all in place of peoples Mississippi was the home of many original peoples and today this is known as the area of Mississippi in a town called Oxford. In gaming terms you know, I I’m older than dirt. So like I started on on console games and and you know, I’m that kid with a stack of quarters and a Donkey Kong machine anywhere they would let me sit and play. More recently, I have become an online gamer. I’m not an eSport player. I’m a gamer and we’ll talk about that distinction later. You’ll you’ll find me as Lord widget in in Lords mobile, I am the one true widget. And so that’s that’s sort of where you’ll find me hanging out in online gaming space.

Unknown Speaker
Thank you George. Kaitlin.

Kaitlin Teniente
Hello, my name is Kaitlin Teniente. I’m the director of eSports and the head eSports coach at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas. Not to be confused with any of the other wonderful St. Mary’s universities and colleges around the US. And I use she her pronouns. A lot of my work is focused on the development of our esports program on both the competitive side of things and the student academic side of things. My background is in marketing and communications. That was what I was doing before I started my job at St Mary’s University when I was growing up some of my favorite video games to play were Super Mario, the Nintendo 64. Honestly a classic as well as Legend of Zelda games Esports titles that I like to play are pretty much exclusively League of Legends. You’ll find me as just my first name, Kaitlin. I’ve been playing since season two. And so that’s why I don’t know I don’t have an in game name because I just use my name.

Glenn DeGuzman
Thank you for the introduction, Kaitlin. Moog

Mike “Moog” Aguilar
Yeah, so my name is Mike Aguilar. I also go by Moog. I’m the director of eSports and co curricular innovation at the University of Oklahoma, which is housed inside of the Division of Student Affairs. I’m an undergrad in it and an MBA. Some things for me is I enlisted the military three months before 911 happened. I grew up in West Germany when the wall was still up, and it was actually called West Germany. And I’ve been gaming since the Atari 2600, as you can’t quite see it. But there’s a pong paddle right up there from when I was grown, and a an entire cavity of my original cartridges, but I’ve been a gamer forever. One of my favorite games growing up was Megaman. It’s kind of my introduction into what I still call very early forms of EDM, and I was definitely the little nerd that had a little Walkman that would record the music off the TV. And it was my entire soundtrack to my childhood. But I also worked for companies like Apple, I’ve worked in the local sector juvenile facilities, and it also helps me kind of scope how to reach youth, and a lot of ways of development using gaming as a preventative measure versus a reactionary measure which Oklahoma is not known for some of the best things in regards to educational standards in regards to K 12 public sector, or our youth programs of incarceration, and those types of things. And gaming creates an opportunity to help deal with those things. But if I’m talking about modern day, I play a lot of APEX legends. I’m a big sci fi fan, and it’s a good blend between the two plus the representation in APEX Legends is uncanny. I love it very, very much. But I’m also a photographer of 20 years I’ve shot pretty much everything that you can think of starting in life, Polynesian dance actually used to dance we had to master kumu hula, down here in Lawton, Oklahoma, where I grew up, and then eventually evolved into shooting weddings, family glamour, automotive, and right now the only thing that I still shoot actively is cosplay, which has a lot, obviously convergence between these two worlds. But I use that now. And I’m evolving that platform now into focusing on advocacy for things that frustrate me, which are some things that we will talk about in this panel, in regards to representation in regards to people gatekeeping incorrectly or advocating, you know, quite a little bit off the mark ofmaking sure that we are creating a world of what we want to have in the future.

Glenn DeGuzman
Thank you. Moog. Let’s stay with you really quickly. And I’m going to give you the the difficult task of you know, our listeners will range in terms of your professionals, to experience administrators and decision makers. So if you can provide our listeners with an overview of ESports, and maybe even that distinction between eSports and gaming, yes. Right this to anyone who may not know about this? Let’s start with that question.

Mike “Moog” Aguilar
So my typical elevator speech for this question is literally gaming eSports very different things with plenty of crossover culturally. But gaming is like playing a pickup being a basketball with your friends at a local court, you don’t have to ask anybody to do it, you see a flat surface around hole and a ball of some sort to throw to that hoop. And then you can play you can just do it on a whim. Esports however, is the NBA Finals, they requires all the development, all the infrastructure, all the team development, psychology, marketing, to real venue operations, logistics, hospitality services, program design, all of that intention is the differentiator between these two worlds. The other biggest component of the differences between again, casual gaming versus what we are doing as eSports as a revenue generator as a program development, as a global phenomenon, is the actual differentiator between those two worlds. When we talk about traditional sports, you know, the NCAA is a perfect example. They’ll sell you equivalency of an open source piece of software. It’s the NCAA is version of football of the NCAA is version of basketball, that we adhere to no traditional athletics programs. However, in eSports, that governing body isn’t open source, it is managed by an intellectual property developer like Blizzard Entertainment or Riot Games, or Psyonix, or Epic Games or these different companies. And so creates an additional hurdle of program infrastructure of scaling up and down, and so forth. But the biggest biggest thing to note about eSports is that the ton of all these different layers of infrastructure from the wellness component psychological development as much as the training in game muscle memory, what you’re eating, what you’re putting into your body, how you’re expanding your mind. All of those are very similar to and a lot of people get frustrated when I use this parallel to traditional athletics. But again, the back end infrastructure has a lot of similarities, the front end and the cultures that we cater to Yes, vastly different in a lot of ways. But then you can argue Madden, You can order NBA 2k And you can mat you know argue FIFA, which almost identical in that regard and perfect parallel. So the biggest thing to note between the two worlds is gaming, definitely more of the casual side, it is also represents last year $155 billion industry of revenue, whereas eSports represented only $1.1 billion sliver of that 155. But the thing to note and why it’s still important, despite that massive ratio of difference is that esports industry has had over 20% year over year growth the last several years and it’s still not letting up. So it is evolving in regards to what things are privatization, what things are important, what things are focused on. But that’s that steam train is not stopping, it’s just growing and pushing through. So casual, definitely more of the gaming you know, pick up a controller pick up your you know, load up, go online, play a game, less interaction, less multiplayer less so that it’s still there. But eSports is meant to be the highest tier of competition at the highest form, to represent a brand, a movement, investor or whatever to go and compete just like in any other traditional sport, whether it be traditional athletics with a ball, or something like motorsports or anything else. That’s competition.

George McClellan
And in front of an audience,

Glenn DeGuzman
yes. And in front of the audience.

George McClellan
I’m curious the audience’s the differentiator. Yeah.

Glenn DeGuzman
I’m curious to know Do you happen to know how many colleges have eSports program is that you can track

Mike “Moog” Aguilar
so as an order of timeline and magnitude. So I started development and r&d at ODU 2016, November 10. I’ll never forget the day because I got asked what is tWitch and that’s what started this whole journey for me at ODU. At that time, across the North American continent, Canada included, there was less than probably 25 institutionally supported developments of any type and only one power five D one, which was Utah Ajay Dimmick literally got his endorsement and development at that moment, literally the week before I started development. And now we fast forward to 2022, we now have well over 300 400 universities that has some sort of institutional development. But one of the most important parts isn’t the collegiate space. It is the K 12 scholastic space where we went from maybe 500 high schools across North America to now well over 3000 high schools and middle schools, which is the establishment of pipeline into our programs and the future, you know, maturation and focus to development into potential path pro in the conventional sense of athletics, but also all the jobs that go with it. So teachers in K 12 now have new purposes, new resources, new job opportunities, and new forms of competition and inclusion. And now the collegiate sector, obviously, with more resources, typically in the K 12 sector fortifies that and legitimizes that purpose, and then the pro sector as it continues to grow and get more visibility, and mainstream acceptance formalizes the entire pipeline from kindergarten to post grad.

George McClellan
I think it’s helpful when you ask about how many there are to remember that there eSports, like registered student organizations, there are eSports, clubs, sports teams, and then there are eSports varsity competitive teams, some schools have all of those some schools have some part of those. And the relationship between those entities on campus can vary. Sometimes they’re collaborative and cooperative, and integrated. And sometimes they’re not. So when you ask how many there are, it’s important that, you know, what do you ask how many varsity there are? Are you asking how many universities have eSports programs?

Glenn DeGuzman
Makes me also wonder, because you bring up the student organizations, and this is just sort of a comment. I started thinking about it. And my son and daughter’s High School has a student organization on and they do Mario Brothers, I think it’s their lunchtime, and they they game. I’m assuming they’re competing, or they’re gaming, and they talk about it in a tournament format. But that’s really interesting to hear.

Kaitlin, you know, I know that we spoke at length a little bit about this and I know that You get this question a lot. And, you know, obviously wanted to ask this question, it was from a personal perspective, you know, my daughter is a big gamer. And when I shared with them about what you do, and I was excited that I was able to, to book you to be on this panel, they became very excited to be actually begin googling you. I want to get your perspective on inclusivity and gender dynamics in eSports. At least from my perspective, as a parent, it seems to be very male dominated. And I know that barriers do exist just based on my conversations, my daughter at least hurt from their perspective, can you speak to maybe your personal experiences as a gamer and now coach and how it has shaped your approach as a coach?

Kaitlin Teniente
Sure, so I’ll be I’ll be honest, um, you know, I didn’t have too many negative experiences with eSports, or gaming until I was a college student myself, that is probably the first time I’ve really experienced any kind of discrimination or harassment, because of my interest in eSports. And that negativity came from other men and other women, who were also gamers or active in the eSports Club. So that was very jarring for me, in college, but what that kind of showed me was that there is a lot of room for growth. And and from there, you know, I always kept those experiences in the back of my mind with everything that I did, you know, very intentional in how I treated other people, you know, was I going to be welcoming? Was I going to try to bring more people into the fold or was going to, you know, be cliquish or a gatekeeper or what have you. So those are experiences are very early on really shaped how I proceeded through the eSports industry as a young working professional. Going into my role at St. Mary’s, as first head coach, and then director of eSports. You know, I had been invited to speak on a lot of different panels, podcasts, local news. Of those the vast majority. I was asked, you know, very similar question, what is it like to be a woman in eSports? Or, Oh, you’re the X, Y, and Z what? You know, just the same question over and over again. And I mentioned this because it is, it is a different experience than a lot of my male colleagues and counterparts, they are not asked, what is it like to be a man in eSports. And so that right there is is part of the difference in experience, experiences that we might face. More majority of those times, those questions come from a good place that comes from a place of curiosity, and just genuinely wanting to know a little bit more about x y&z. And so for me, I have to remember that when I’m answering these questions, it’s not necessarily for myself, right. It’s for the audience. It’s for those who maybe this is their first time watching a panel about diversity, equity inclusion, maybe this is their first time, you know, listening to someone speak about the challenges that women face in eSports. I have to keep in mind that the question more often not coming from a good place, but it’s for an audience that generally hasn’t heard this response before, or anyone’s response to this question before. And so what that also gives me is a unique opportunity to use that platform, right? Because if I am not that I’m being singled out, but if I’m getting asked this question, it also doubles as an opportunity for me to speak about other things that are really important to me, like the monetary barrier to entry and eSports. There is a difference between depending on where you live, you can look at a map of your city and you can highlight the zip codes of rich schools and highlight the zip codes of poor schools. And when you’re recruiting as a coach or director. There’s a difference in the games that students play for on those rich schools, and vice versa. So, again, going back to the original question, you know, I can use these opportunities to educate those that are genuinely curious and talk about things that are really important to me. With that being said, a couple of things that myself and my coaching staff have kept really close to our heart is that representation matters. And that’s number one, that’s a really nice thing to say. But unless we’re doing something about it doesn’t really matter. So the thing we decided to do about that is to be intentionally visible. And the reason that this is important is because my coaching staff of five I have fought very hard, yes, my coaching staff of five is, is 100% People of Color, and of my coaches, myself, Alena Serrana, four out of the five are women. And so being intentionally visible, helps us, you know, go back to, yes, representation matters. And here’s why. Because when we are visible as coaches, it encourages more people to try out for the program, or, you know, sign up for a recruiting website to get in front of us. It inspires more people to learn more about eSports, or join our students staff. And so that’s, again, being a woman in new sports. These experiences have shaped what I do and how I do things, you know, again, talking about opportunity versus accessibility for women. Not everybody has the opportunity to try out for the myriad of reasons, maybe they’re discouraged. Or they think, Oh, if I try out, it’s just gonna be toxic and X, Y, and Z, it’s not going to be a good experience. Or they weren’t never encouraged to do so maybe that woman or that student, whoever has never had anyone in their life, encourage them to do this, that Oh, no, girls don’t do that. Women don’t do that. But when they see me, or coach Karolina, who is also an avid Apex player, out here, talking about these things, doing these things, he can inspire more people. So that’s why it’s important to us. And additionally, it is the example that we set for the men and the women in our program. From everything to speaking publicly about these things to the day to day, you know, I gotta be very considerate about my actions, and what of my behavior is going to be reflected to my students? And it could be something like, if I’m speaking with a students, and they interrupt me, am I as the director going to let them interrupt me? Or am I going to set an example say, hey, you know, don’t interrupt me. And, you know, keeping in mind that the example that I’m setting for the women in my program is don’t let anyone interrupt you, regardless of their gender. And for men don’t interrupt anybody, regardless of their gender. So yeah, that the experiences I had very early on Dodson really shaped the way that I approach things as a coach, and also the way that we built this program at St. Mary’s, by being just intentionally visible, because when you tell the world, everyone belongs in eSports, but you don’t have anything to back it up, who’s gonna believe you? I’m not going to believe you. But I think the results speak for themselves we have, in our program, a population of about 60 students, and 40% are women. So we’re not quite at the 55%. That is reflected at St. Mary’s University. But we’re getting pretty close.

Glenn DeGuzman
That is pretty good. You shared a lot in your response in the US, I when I pulled from it was using your platform to teach and role model, you brought up some really good points about the access and the cost of just even getting into this sport and representation. And I want to build off that with this next question. But I want to welcome back George. Explain to folks what happened. So well. I’m going to ask the question that asked you after this question, because I want to stay on this kind of line here.

We are recording this on is it January 3, I kind of lost track it’s January 3. So it’s, it’s we’re all still going through sort of the winter storm stuff. And I know that internet is is not that great in certain parts of the country. So got building off what was shared by Kaitlin Moog. How do you I mean, you’re obviously given your role. How do you build and inclusive culture in eSports. With with college students, and what advice would you give to administrators, student affairs professionals who are building or faculty who are building inclusive communities, or an Esports program? And you know, what are the strategies you utilize?

Mike “Moog” Aguilar
I think, um, I think one, I definitely love this as a follow up to Kaitlin’s great example of execution and intent. And the biggest undertone that I want to take from that highlight first is it starts with you the person in the seat of development, the person who is leading the charge, who’s scoping this and structuring it. And I always have this phrase, that the majority of us in our seats of power sides of responsibility are usually one or two, rarely, all three of these three different things. There’s the gamer, the business oriented person, or the academic, they’re rarely all three, if you’re lacking in one of those, now, you know which networks you need to be building up within your own campus of resources to provide the whole purpose of what higher education is about, which is growing professionals up today and tomorrow, especially if we have the foresight about tomorrow. And eSports is still a very much tomorrow topic. But past that, one of the biggest things I want to reference a story about humility about where I was putting my place really hard. But I had a student who was for a moment, and I’ll go in and date myself, I don’t mind it. I’m 40 years old. Now, I’m definitely more of a bloomer in the space in regards to development of my seat amongst most of my peers in the space. But in the very first kind of meeting I had with students to gain interest and start developing programming. I introduced one of my founding players by the name of Callie Simonton. So it’s currently if you ever see this, here’s that story once again. But I introduced her because I was enamored with the fact that we already had amazing talents on campus that were driven that were passionate that were willing to be vulnerable to the idea of mentorship, but also vulnerable to the idea of sharing it back. And I already had a pretty good standard, and I still do about making sure student voices are equal to mine. And they amplify mine or amplify theirs. And it’s not a matter of saying just because I’m the old head in the room, or the you know, older person in the space that my voice is, is paramount, it is not the only voice. But I introduced the student as a top 500 female, merci in Overwatch. And I love the story. And I referenced I get emotional every time I share it, because it was one of those moments where my student understood the assignment before I even told them the assignment. And she didn’t interrupt me in the moment, she waited till the end of it out of respect and pulled me aside and say the fact that I’m a woman has nothing to do with the fact that I’m taught 500 and put me in my place. And that was day one. And I apologized profusely for that. But then I understood my own assignment better than what I originally set out to do. And so that level of vulnerability and intent and building a culture of two way communication is critical to empowering the next generation of understanding that their voice is absolutely powerful. And it is worth spotlighting that it is worth clearing the path for but you have to meet students where they’re at, you have to understand how they view the world. And as a first generation, first round, millennials, any old transitional into a Gen Z audience predominantly, there is a difference in the way that we look at the world on top of an administration tends to be Xers and boomers and older, you know, in that and understanding that that one of the biggest skill sets that we have in this seat of development is the art of translation is the art of being the translator between the initiatives and the metrics and the the the you know, the different, you know, standards or goals that we need to meet from an administrative perspective. And then coupling it with the values and the intent and the passions of the students and unders letting them and helping them understand a little bit of both worlds, you know, finding the way to truly be inclusive. And I do share one story I gave a TED talk in 2019. But nevermind that there was another TED Talk panelist that shared the way that she looks at DEI. And she said there’s three phases and rarely people do the third phase. The first phase of diversity is a room filled with people of different walks, genders, religious backgrounds, political backgrounds, diversity, and the most black and white definition. Inclusivity is the fact that there’s a table with a place setting for every one of those individuals, but welcoming, welcoming, the hardest one to do is that there is a room full of diverse individuals with a place setting for everyone and a menu that caters to everybody’s palate, and gaming. The gaming side of this is absolutely the welcoming component. And that set the tone for me and oh use development about the fact that tension impact and Halo are equals cod and Animal Crossing are equals and plenty of people will argue that with me. And I don’t care about that because the front facing of cod shirt will never touch an Animal Crossing. But the community engagement of students especially with the sheer volume of students that we have in the know you or the bigger university is important, especially from a student affairs initiative, about how many students can I impact to give them things to do, but also help give them pathways to grow outside of the classroom, on top of what they’re learning in the classroom, and then give them ways to even use what they’re learning in the classroom immediately before their livelihoods are dependent on it as career people pass postgrad. And the last portion I want to mention is thatfounding development. The we had identified 11 Student positions of leadership that we wanted to build from the very beginning of those 11 Seven were women. We use program was developed by women predominantly. And it allowed us to catapult very, very fast into scaling up a macro perspective. So some numbers. For us for you the program, the community around the program, the community of the topic is now over 3100 members, it is the one of the largest youth organizations on campus, the program, the eSports component, which now couples all the competition production, media and news, journalistic practice opportunities, community engagement, and you know, the intentional stuff like that is now pushing 220 students. And so one thing that I share with that is those numbers sound amazing, great, yes, I’m proud of it too. But the other thing too, if I put that in translation to to like what Kaitlin just shared, the ratio of percentage of student body to the size of her programs intention is almost identical. I just have a bigger pool of students that are currently enrolled at OU versus St. Mary’s, the percentage of students in that enrollment base in the program is almost identical. And that’s really important. So I want to make sure that the fact that the school that I represent might have more students is absolutely on par, you know, and vice versa in regard to the intention of an impact. And so, the very, very last thing that I want to share is when we talk about the eSports side of this, when we recruit in traditional athletics to programs like OU football, we’re getting a student athlete who has had over 10 years of mentorship sportsmanlike, conduct training, discipline, mental acuity, mentorship from a coach, when I recruit an 18 year old cod player to the University of Oklahoma, I’m getting somebody with probably zero development in regards to the interpersonal skills of professional, you know, understand their own decorum, their presence, their own brand. And that comes with the further development of what we’re seeing in things like K 12, and the Scholastic pipeline in having younger and younger exposure to the ideas of digital literacy representation online in a digital environment, how to conduct yourselves, and the fact that you originally especially the millennial generation, hid behind the keyboard hid behind that IGN that name as a means of safety, which gave them a false sense of freedom and how they parade women or minorities or people that they just don’t like or literally did a better job and then in the game, and I’m definitely watering down the verbiage that they would use in that scenario. But if I’m teaching a six year old and T ball, how to shake a hand after a loss, and go back to the training grounds get better so they can overcome their champion at six years old. Imagine when I’m teaching digital literacy, and that same kind of mentality of six years old, and Roblox and Minecraft and those things, and then growing them into eSports, in middle school in high school, and by the time that we get into collegiate space, how much well rounded and better stewards of a community that is a truly inclusive will come. So we represent the first generational chapter of developing a new industry that predates things like the NCAA that predates these governing bodies that rule, the world of athletics, that rule, these different types of things, accreditation, and academia. All these things were in the precursor of that. And the question that I always ask is thinking about how history always repeats itself? What did programs like, oh, football look like in the first 10 years? Because that’s what this is. And people can’t fathom that. What was the world like in football for 50 years before the NCAA existed? We’re in that point, a portion of the timeline of development. And we see this all over the place in regards to different conferences, NCAA and AC II, you know, and you know, and ECC, ecc egfx, you know, these different conferences in the eSports world, are no different than, again, the infantile state of what the NCAA represented, you know, again, in the birth of it, and now, majority of especially the universities that are in those D two, D two, three, the D four, you know, or the 123, sorry, do go in high school classifications. You know, they’re, they’re regurgitating governance coming from a governing body, they kind of just kind of sold 50% of their critical thought and development to you don’t have to think about that stuff already. There’s already a baseline. And now you have a scope that is narrowed of what you can do, because of those, those protections, and enforcement’s and we’re all throwing darts at a board hoping that they’ll stick and that’s a good thing. So if I see somebody going hard into competition, if I see somebody going hard into more casual or blend of it between the club narrative varsity narrative or student or you know, casual gaming element, all that is valid, because who becomes the fans of your team’s just because I’m OU and have OU football doesn’t mean I get that community immediately as my fanship I have to develop and cultivate a grow strong alumni, build a community that’s inclusive, that will absolutely rally behind those teams, which then does create the revenue streams, internally strong alumni pools, endowments, and so forth. But that is a 10 year roadmap easy. And so when you couple all that the the main question was about inclusivity is meeting students where they’re at listening to them, and the time sink that’s involved in that is that you do have to listen to a lot of students, a lot of students get really motivated, they’re passionate, because they found something that finally speaks to them that represents them in a topic. And then the further forms of representation of maybe somebody who looks like them speaks like them came from the same background are called community or international students are these things that transcend those barriers, then comes into fray. But if you are in a seat of development like these, and you’re not even allowing students to have the ability to touch you to speak to you to reach you, then you will never find the true champions that are already on your campus. And make no mistake, the Esports titles that are predominant the League of Legends, the Overwatch, the fan, more fantasy based titles are the top tier eSports in the world. It’s not Matt, and it’s not TK, it’s not FIFA. And that also goes in the socio economic discussion that Caitlin was alluding to, in regards to the originality of different area codes and zip codes in regards to recruitment. But the one step past that is that when you start to take sensitivity and apply sensitivity to all these things, you start to create a world where the lowest income High School and the highest income high school can meet each other, have a conversation and carry a dialogue with each other. And society, that does not happen often. And it doesn’t happen often in a peaceful mindset, or in a peaceful environment. And so we hosted an event that did literally have a school that is predominantly 90% minority demographic that are on, you know, federally mandated or state mandated meal plans and low income status men with one of the most richest private schools in Oklahoma, in a Rocket League tournament. And they faced off shook hands and had conversations as if none of that mattered. And that’s where gaming transcends that. But because of the more introverted nature of our culture, they struggle with how to articulate that. And so being that representative, that conduit of saying, your voice is powerful, let me help you understand how to leverage it and scale it up, is how you end up with the result of people that will be the succession of our roles, that will be the future generations of the legacy of creating these programs that will stand the test of time well, past are our last breaths. So that was a lot. But

Glenn DeGuzman
you know, and I want to pull George into the conversation. And George, we will get to the initial question later. But I want to kind of stay and keep going on this thread a little bit. You know, Moog spoke a little bit about the obviously empowering students to take ownership in the journey. And it’s a very powerful platform of, of, of how the sport is growing from multiple lenses. I keep looking, I want to reframe it back to the from a collegiate administration side, what advice would you give college leaders who are trying to develop an Esports program on their campus? Taking, I mean, obviously, there’s multiple lenses to view this as, as Moog and as Kaitlin, as her already kind of described in the previous two questions, but some of your initial thoughts.

George McClellan
Well, sometimes life hand, just some great serendipity. Right? And so that little power outage, I think is nice, because I’m gonna build on what Kaitlin shared and what Michael shared, and actually tackle a little bit of the original question, and then the one that you just asked, try to put them all together in a bow. So when I got into this, I got into it, I was a senior student affairs officer. So I had this sort of institutional interest, hey, there’s something going on out there, that I’ve heard about. And I was hearing about it from our students. So the student affairs person in me, was focused on the individual student, like, hey, they’re all involved in this, and I don’t know anything about it. And I need to know more about it. I met Charles Huber, who was a dean of students at a smaller institution, and he was running an Esports program. And so he came into the book project, and I met Ryan, through Peter lake at Stetson. And Ryan was a law student who was playing eSports and was professional eSports. athlete. And so I wanted to bring Ryan into the project so that we’d have that student voice, right. And all of us got into it, because all of us believe that there’s tremendous potential in eSports. And that potential is stuff that Kaitlin and Michael have spoken to. But like all great potential, it would benefit from a little bit of structure and a little bit of encouragement, but I want to underline the little bit part. Because in higher ed, we have this tendency to want to control and bureaucratized stuff. And eSports is a counterculture movement. cannot forget that. And the fastest way for us in higher ed, we can’t kill eSports that would be an arrogant thing for us to think. But we can by trying to dominate it by not listening to Student Voices by not building inclusive spaces. Students will just go off and take eSports somewhere else. They don’t need us. Esports existed before us. It will exist after us. They really don’t meet us. And so Charles and Ryan and I got into this project to sort of try to start a conversation because at the time there really wasn’t a conversation in the literature and in the professional associations about eSports in terms of advice, and this again is going to build on what Kaitlin and Moog share first advice is hire people like Caitlin and Michael. But my know what your institutional values are, and make sure that you engage in ways consistent with those values. And make sure you know why you’re trying to get into eSports. What is it that you want? Is this about enrollment? Is it about prestige is about competition? Is it? What is it about for you as an institution? Now, those two pieces of advice are true for any sort of initiative. Right. But here’s some, here’s some additional ones. I mentioned this earlier, I talked about the sort of different Well, let me, let me step back. So So there’s, there’s some folks who get it and some institutions who get into eSports, because it’s about prestige. And there are some people who get into it for enrollment. And there are some people who get into it for the academics and helping students develop careers and, you know, changing campus culture, there’s lots of reasons that institutions, we talked about this in the book, Why do institutions get involved in eSports. And then there’s those different forms, the RSO’s, the sports clubs, and you know, my advocacy is to the extent that you can get involved in eSports, in as many of those ways as you can. The most successful eSports programs are the ones that span across areas of campus interest, that aren’t simply isolated to one corner or one pocket. The second piece of advice that I would share with folks is don’t underestimate and don’t under invest. This tendency to want to do sort of creeping incrementalism in higher ed, this is not a place to build five seats today, and then come back and realize you needed 25, and then come back and realize you needed a varsity program, and then come back and write students don’t, they’re not going away, they don’t need us. Listen to them, and anticipate where that’s gonna go. So, so invest, invest. That’s an and that’s the other thing I would say to folks is whatever, whatever you’re trying to accomplish, and whatever you’re willing to invest, make sure you have some sort of systemic way of measuring whether you’re getting there or not. I think that we’re going to talk later about sort of what’s coming ahead. But I think, I think at some point, there’s going to be a reckoning, a lot of people have gotten into eSports, without all the planning. And we’re going to come to a point now that esports, you know, we’re sort of now three and four and five years into eSports. Right? There’s going to be a revisiting of this. And that’s healthy, unnecessary. We need to build a habit of constantly, sort of where are we? And then the fourth and final thing I’ll say, and it’s picks up on a point that has been made already, but I want to reiterate it because I believe in it so much. Esports has to be student led tSports, traditional sports. You have student leadership organizations, right? I mean, you have like student student participants, I don’t call them student athletes because of the sort of racist history of that phrase. But but the student participates to student participants in traditional athletics, you have leadership councils, you have team captains, you have all of that sort of thing. But they’re not driving that show. It’s very clear who’s driving? It’s the head coach. Right? It’s the ad. It’s the conference leaders, it’s the presidents of institutions, in eSports, could better be your students or your done? That’s just the bottom line. You got to see yourself as facilitating, not direct. I think that’s essential. So there’s, there’s a sort of quick answer to how I got into this space and what the what we were trying to do with the book, and some advice for folks moving forward.

Glenn DeGuzman
George that was very clear to me, basically, know your institutional values and better be student led. I liked your point about spanning. I think it was like one of the first advice you gave, ensuring that your program spans across the institution like the interest institution, and it leads actually to this next question that I’m going to open up to all of you, you know, obviously, in, obviously, but in 2019, NCAA took a hands off policy to collegiate gaming, and that allowed the university to really determine where do you place an eSports? Program administratively? Or where do you want to recite? So it allows the institution to decide, you know, obviously students is a big component and should be the driver of it. But I’m curious to know from all of you, so this question is to every one of you. Where is your eSports program located administratively, and, and how does where it’s located, influence your program and purpose. And I’m going to ask Moog if you can kick it off.

Mike “Moog” Aguilar
Yeah, and this is again, another great segue off of to Dr. McClellan’s kind of finale for that and that I’m housing student affairs. But I want to share a little bit of that journey, I set out a tone in saying that if I believe that gaming is for everyone, it needs to live in something that is more agnostic, especially for this size of the school. And one of the things that I always say is that I want it to be a growth in the nervous system of the university, not a growth on the surface of the university. And also wanted to prevent as long as possible, if not forever, the siloing of this topic away from the general connection of the community. Whereas on campuses like ours, the football program is almost an entire it is an entirely different world. Those athletes, you rarely see, aside from walking from the dorm, to the stadiums, and back, they have their own personal tutors, they have their own personal complete infrastructure, food, everything. And I don’t want that world to exist, at least not anytime soon. And at the same point, again, trying to create the pathways of it. So we’re housed inside of do Student Affairs, which was a 2020 Evolution, in the very beginning started as a registered student organization that was staff initiated staff led and pull the students in to provide the boards and then we fit the fit to share the load of intention, scope and future trajectory. So I originated in the department of it, which is where I was originally hired from, because what other department on campus is in literally every physical wall on campus. So it didn’t create the best pathways in regards to relationship building in regards to deans or the academia components, academic components. And rather, it was definitely more of the infrastructure components of saying, Hey, I at least have the Rolodex of the entire campus that I can knock on or some form of representation from each one of those different areas. on campuses, whether it was the law school, whether it was our medical services school in Oklahoma City, or our satellite campus in Tulsa. It’s out of the norm and main campus. So that grew us from, you know, the first two, three years into then Dr. Surrat, our Dean of Students, finally coming over from Berkeley and getting a final kiss and time in front of them and saying, Hey, we built this program that definitely speaks about student affairs more than anything. How about you to help us out and so that’s sort of my trajectory of finally becoming the first ever ft one FTE director of eSports for you, but then elevated all of it into the forefront, which just amplifies the student affairs mission. But we’re housed inside of student affairs as well with the intention of the same mandates of how do I help students learn outside of the classroom? How do I get as many How do I create pathways and doorways for students to get involved if they choose to, by creating the information to inform them that this exists after that is on the students and making sure that we’re present and available to answer this question, so but yeah, that’s, that’s it. That’s our scope. That’s our purpose. And that’s where we reside. Yeah.

Glenn DeGuzman
Moog. Similarly, UC Berkeley is also in student affairs, given the size of our institution. Now, Georgia, your situation is a little bit different, right?

George McClellan
Yeah. And I love this question. I’m I because I think it’s a great question, but because I think this panel is going to share some really important different ideas, but but also you’ll hear some things. So eSports generally find finds its way into one of three institutional pockets, Student Affairs, or athletics or other it’s always interesting because it’s other but other tends to be academic affairs. And, and that’s the case at the University of Mississippi. The history of eSports. Here is it started as a club sport, and it came out of computer science. And a group of faculty folk over there, started supporting eSports and then Tony amateur Dr. Tony amateur, who does our outreach programs, all of our online education stuff. He got involved and, and he became an advocate and then our provost, Noah Wilkins became an advocate and a lot of the energy around earlier Michael talked about some of the recent developments that have happened at the University of Mississippi in our program, but a lot of the growth of eSports at the University of Mississippi is driven by students, and by faculty and academics. There’s a genuine interest in the connection between eSports and academics. And a number of our faculty folks are doing research around eSports and so we’re positioned in the Provost Office, the land sharks, by the way, go land sharks. And, and so we’re we’re positioned in in the provost office and our our vision as an institution is to move to a place where we have a truly cross institutional, student focused, academic, and student life partnership. And that’s, I think, a theme you’re going to hear. I think all of us believes that you hows it somewhere depending on what you’re trying to accomplish. But you need to make sure it’s not isolated there. You need these bridges to different places. So that’s our story at the University of Mississippi. We’re housed in academics.

Unknown Speaker
And Kaitlin, where is your program residing?

Kaitlin Teniente
So, I’m guessing, at St. Mary’s, our esports program lives within our athletics program. Now, I do want to make a note that we are a division two school we’re in the Lone Star Conference that’s gonna be a little bit different. A bit different than Division One athletics departments. For us, at St. Mary’s, the idea of bringing the eSports program to campus was first championed by our athletic director, Robert Coleman, and he was inspired because of his son played a lot of Esports titles, fortnight being the most popular one that he references when he talks about his son. But that was that was kind of the initial champion. My assistant coach, Coach Karolina, she is the person who initially proposed the idea to athletics, because she used to be in our athletics department as compliance. So there we go. And so she planted these seeds, these ideas, and our athletic director is the person who reached out across campus to IT, to the dean of students to get that, that buy in that, you know, it can be competition, it can be this, it can be that, let’s do it. They secured a sponsor and built out the physical part of the printer arena. And then they hired me and go from there. But speaking towards our program, goals, our mission. It is Academic Excellence than competitive excellence, because again, all of the students competing under our banner are considered student athletes. And we are of the mindset that the student part comes first. So it has been very academic focus, very competitive focus. But even in our very first season, our very first year of operation, I’m we discovered more than just students wanting to play the game, right? Your students are interested in all aspects of eSports, whether that’s social media, or streaming and broadcasting, or hosting on campus events. And that’s when we started building out our students, staff, of our students component of our program. You know, speaking towards those pathways and doors for students, after college, helping them get those get that experience as a student. Being in athletics has, I think, been a fantastic framework for how we operate because a lot of the resources that we might struggle to, to get outside of athletics are already built into our department, things like marketing and communications. We have an athletics communications director who handles things like media requests, if anybody requests to speak with me or a student, there is somebody who already handles those for us. We have somebody on our within the department that just handles website, statistics and scores that you mentioned, you know, before before we started recording that you had looked at our website. Now if you if you had a moment to check out our schedule, you will see that every single game that we’ve played this semester has been recorded. And our history book is updated year to year. You know, things like that, that we might struggle with outside of our department are already built in. Things like our compliance officer, you know, he is the person who’s making sure that students are eligible to compete that they’re maintaining full time credits 2.0 GPA. Although we are considered a non NCAA sport, like stunt, our student athletes are still represented on our SEC committee, Student Athlete Advisory Committee, we have two we have three representatives. Most teams have two or three. So we still have a voice with the department and even other risks. horses that again might be difficult for us to achieve outside of the department are things like access to our athletic trainers, we’ve had students with issues with their hands, wrists, shoulders, and our athletic trainers are trained to deal with those kinds of injuries or stresses. We have a strength and conditioning coach who twice a week, you know, he’s walking our kids through workouts. Same with all of our other 12 sports teams. We have sports psychologists on staff that we again, as teams will work with to help with the mental load of being in competition being in the moment of the game, similar to all of our other varsity sports, varsity teams. I will say though, when it comes to building bridges on campus, that is where we come across some challenges. Because students, faculty, whomever might have a preconceived notion of what athletics is, and it just, it’s not always positive. That can sometimes be a barrier when we want to build bridges across campus. But we use that to our benefit. We have this again, you’ll hear me say building bridges all the time, because that really is what we try to do, building bridges and inviting people in. So and that comes in many different forms. We’ve partnered with our business school to run a Super Smash Bros tournament for homecoming. We are an official homecoming event on the official homecoming calendar. We do a yearly fundraiser every fall to 12 hour livestream. And we invite people from across campus to join us and play different games, like our Dean of Students use joined us to play fall guys before we’ve had our vice provost of diversity, equity and inclusion. Join us to play Tetris and talk about, you know, her new role and her new department. We’ve invited the Career Center to again, you know, come play a game, and here’s, you know, five minutes to tell us everything about the career center. So while yes, we’ve had some challenges, building those bridges across campus, what we have found is by literally inviting people in, hey, do you want to come play a game, we started to break down some of those barriers, some of those challenges and, and really kind of weave ourselves into the fabric of campus. So I think being in athletics at a division two school has definitely has its benefits, but it’s not without challenges. So I’m very thankful to be in athletics. But throughout this whole thing, there was one thing that I kind of kept in the back of my mind, because Mike mentioned it, you you started in it, and now you’re here and here, you know, there’s this growth trajectory that doesn’t necessarily exist in traditional athletics. When you think about eSports, you can have your coaches, you can have your director, but the growth opportunity, that’s that’s the unknown in terms of the employee leadership, so I don’t know it’s something to think about for the future.

George McClellan
I do want to say, I’m so glad that Kaitlin talked about the wellness of student participants, because it’s an area that doesn’t, I think, get as much attention when people start to plan a program. And Glen, this goes back to what when you ask about people building programs, this is one of those areas people don’t think about and it has to do with the kind of preconceptions about what eSports is, I think, but planning for the wellness of your student participants, things like wrist injuries, eye strain, the stresses of playing, you know, all of those sorts of things that’s really important. And a lot of a lot of institutions that are involved in eSports have smaller student enrollments, they may be in rural areas. So the athletic the pool of potential athletics trainers may be limited. And building on the existing resources in athletics, whether you’re in academics or student affairs, or whatever, that’s just so important.

Glenn DeGuzman
And I appreciate hearing just where you all each reside, because it does speak to how programs can potentially learn from each other as to you know, whether you know, like to hear the resources of being in athletics, to being in a larger institution and creating pathways to the research that can particularly tie when you’re on the Faculty Affairs. It’s really interesting and one of the things we talked about before the even we start recording was putting the websites of all your programs down below because that you know, as we think about those are gonna be watching or listening to this episode. If they’re thinking like, you know, what should we be thinking about when we’re growing or when we Visit, what are the evolution our programs gonna look like in the in the future? They can take some potential ideas or thoughts from just visiting your websites. And it’s also a perfect segue into the final question. It’s our standard question that we always ask, since this podcast is called Student Affairs NOW, sort of like what are you feeling now? And what are your hopes for Esports in the next 10 years, particularly on college campuses, and if you can take two minutes each to kind of kind of close out your thoughts, MOOG, I’m going to start with you.

Mike “Moog” Aguilar
Okay, I definitely want to go back to what I said earlier about integration into the nervous system of the university. And everyone here has talked about, you know, whether there is a challenge of overcoming those hurdles of building relationship or the intention of it. So one thing I failed to mention, as I’m also an adjunct instructor inside of the College of Journalism, as eSports is a media entertainment industry as well, just like traditional sports, and those meteorites are a large portion of what fuels that machine. And one of the things that people are focused so much on is the competition of competitive video games. But did people realize that national boards are now judging in journalistic programs and projects for ranking in eSports coverage. And so those are new ways of competing with this topic, while also building the skill sets that this industry needs. And a university that the premise of the TED talk I gave in 2019, was to paint the picture of higher education to be the perfect landscape of development for this topic, we have all of the training disciplines that we need for this industry already, on the majority of our campuses, we all have business or communication style degrees, there’s some kind of media component, a lot of us have sports management, or sports management types. Law is paramount. And so there’s tons of ways that we can integrate from an academic perspective, to further amplify one doing this correctly, ethically, and establishing the standards of operations, not just for ourselves, but for our conference for region for national or global board or infrastructure. And then the future of it is obviously the job placement. So we’ve seen plenty of degrees starting to come out, you know, certificate programs, and I’m not really going to go into my thoughts on either or, the point is, is that in the future, you know, we saw ESPN dabble into tSports, several years ago, and then completely retract, I think they’ll eventually come back as it stabilizes. But the main kind of hot take of this is that we have a lot of great executors in the space in specific areas, both macro micro specific intention of competition, specific content of community engagement, dei initiatives, representation, program executions, and different things. I’ll reference Boise State as a great one of the journalistic practicum doing a lot of production, and a lot of standardization in there. There’s tons of high tier competition. So as this world continues to mature, and all of us start to care more about the balance of those things coupled in with wellness, there’s the entire research component that a lot of our universities are identified for, that needs to dive into this, whether it be medical research, or into program development, even journalism and law, all kinds of tons of opportunities. But the other biggest thing to note is that in the grand scheme of things, people need to remember that this industry is still a baby. It is very, very young. And we alluded to it earlier, in regards to the fact that esports doesn’t need the Scholastic space, we are defining our purpose in this in this entire segment. Is our pipeline necessary? There are obvious benefits that we can see from it. But from the standpoint of how it got here to this point, it did it without us. So what value can we add? What What kind of intention can we do to finally stabilize it bring it more in the mainstream, more acceptance, less, less about the controversy that is deep at the core of issues that are now becoming systematic issues, because of the lack of oversight, the lack of governance, how do we mature those stabilizes and create those pathways that we can get away from narratives like being a women in gaming is something that needs to be focused on, instead of just saying, gamers are and competitors from our universities went and competed on a global stage, regardless of any other identifier. After that, those one off stories to highlight that person, absolutely a valid place to highlight those different adversities and different challenges. But on the front face of it, the the admiration doesn’t come from that, or this, this is the university or this, this brand, now pushing this team into the forefront. If your quarterback gets injured, it’s still the University of Oklahoma versus Ole Miss. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who the quarterback is. And whoever wins that game, it is still those two universities, the rosters don’t matter in the grand scheme of things because your alumni are gonna pay for that. And your different support models are still going to support that. That’s all of the the meat and potatoes of how we got here. But no matter what something happens, unfortunately, our two schools still compete. And that’s the other thing too is is that you can’t make excuses. You have to start learning how to build the the infrastructure strong enough that you do have your B rosters and not just in competition, but in operations and administration. And then the support of it comes from that when you do provide visibility and tant tangibles to it, so I’ll stop there.

Glenn DeGuzman
Thank you Moog. Kaitlin, what are your final thoughts?

Kaitlin Teniente
Um, you know, it’s tough to say I think, personally, I think we’re gonna see A lot of really positive change. And one of the areas that I’m focusing on is recruitment. It’s not necessarily changing the way we recruit but changing the way we approach recruitment. The pipelines for recruitment are just now being filled, Mike Mike set this. All of this is still in its infancy. But one of the things that I think we’ll see a change in is more access more opportunity. For students K through 12, when they’re in their final two years of high school, we’re going to see a change in the people who are trying to get recruited and who gets recruited. I mean, that in a good way. Right now, I think recruitment is very focused on the skill level, right, who’s the Who’s your top 500, who’s who’s good at this role in this game, without acknowledging there’s probably a large group of people who haven’t had the opportunity, accessibility or encouragement to reach those levels. So I think we’re gonna see a lot more continued buy in from K through 12, as well as a change in the people who are getting recruited for these really, really great teams really, really great schools. I don’t think it’ll come quick, though. I think the industry will move kicking and screaming, because of this notion of, okay, but but the good player, the most qualified player, without again, realizing there are a lot of factors that got that particular student there that weren’t available for these other students. So yeah, I think there’ll be a change in how we, I hope there’s a change in how we approach recruitment. I know, for myself and my assistant coach, her entire job in our program is just recruitment. And while yes, we do use services, like NCSA which is now absorbing be recruited, we also try to implement our out of the box ideas to recruit people that otherwise may have been overlooked, like reaching out to more private schools reaching out to more non co Ed schools like all boys, private schools, all girls private schools, that maybe aren’t on the radar for other programs to recruit from. Um, so in that also depends on on the games that we have. In our program, like right now we’ve got Call of duty fortnight, League of Legends, Rainbow Six Siege Rocket League, and soon to be valorant. A lot of those games are PC based, which also can cut out a large portion of students that have only ever played console games, because that is all they could have ever afforded. So we as a program have to be mindful of okay, what games? are we offering more games or refilling varsity teams for and supporting? So I think there’s going to be a shift there as we continue going, but it’s not to say 10 years is, that’s a lot. I’m thinking maybe five years, we’ll see that.

Glenn DeGuzman
Five years in the future, George, your final thoughts?

George McClellan
Predicting the future of anything, but particularly eSports is a risky venture. I will I will echo the comments of my colleagues. I’ll add something. There’s a conversation that’s coming in eSports around ethics, and cheating. There are shadowy connections between the gambling industry and eSports. And the more money there is, the more likelihood that we’re going to see significant issues around cheating and ethics, and gambling. And we need to be ready for that. Rather than reacting with shock. You know, it’s sort of like the scene in the movie Casa Blanca, there’s gambling going on here. I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you know, we know what’s coming. And and we need to be grown ups about this and get in front of it. There’s other ethical issues. That’s just one. I think the question about ethics is an important one in eSports. I think people like Michael and Kaitlin, and our students are ready for those conversations. We just need to help make spaces where those come conversations can take place. Which leads me to my second thought, which is there is no national governance organization for Collegiate Esports. Maybe there doesn’t need to be I don’t know, maybe we’re not going to get to one single one. But but I’ll go back to the question you asked about why did we get involved in the book, my colleagues and I, and part of it was this notion of if we higher ed, we don’t get in front of this, we’re gonna get run over by this. And, and a governance organization. Maybe it’s several. But but we need, we need governance organizations. I like nes, but nes has been about let’s sponsor leagues and all that kind of stuff. And nice, should get a lot of props. And I’m not saying nes needs to go away. But maybe it’s not next. Maybe it’s something we haven’t seen yet. But I think there needs to be a movement toward governance in the field. And then And then the last thing I’ll say is, I’ll go back to something that I said before. Well, I don’t know what it’s gonna look like, I know, it’s not going to look like it looks today. Right. and higher ed, in order for that full potential to be realized, higher ed absolutely has to get out of this idea of controlling it. And think of itself as a facilitator of it. We’re our partner to eSports. We don’t own it. It doesn’t need us. It could be better with our voices, I think. And that, for the audience today. I guess that’s what I guess that’s my entreaty to everybody who’s in the audience today. I realize y’all are really busy people and you got 1000 things to think about. But I’m telling you, a big chunk of your students are playing in eSports. And you need to know about it, you need to talk about it, you need to think about it, you need to engage with them around it. You can’t just sort of sit back and you know, act like you don’t know it’s there. Because it’s there. It’s there in a really big way on your campus.

Glenn DeGuzman
Thank you, George. Wow. I want to thank all of you for joining this panel today. I went in very curious to learn more. And I think I’m walking away with even more questions, because it’s really speaking to the complexity of, of this, this very young, but also fast evolving, programming in this culture that it plays on a college campus. So thank you. And I think that’s also a perfect way to say, hey, we need to do this again in the future, because let’s let’s let’s see where eSports is. And in a few years, obviously, this is an intriguing and very important topic for us to talk about. And I’m glad you’re able to join this podcast. Really quickly, I’m just going to close up. And you know, I just want to point out that Student Affairs Now has grown tremendously over the last couple of years. I recently heard that we were able to hit that 75,000 Download mark, and we’re over 30,000 views on YouTube. And you know, our program and our podcast is expanding. So you know, a welcoming Mamta Accapadi to our team is a new host. If you have never listened to some of our episodes, they are phenomenal. These are definitely meaningful conversations and discussions on so many topics that are part of our student affairs profession. And I’m just grateful to have other amazing guests like the three of you to be part of this topic. So to audience, definitely check out our websites, studentaffairsnow.com, check out the archives, check out the topic, check out all the guests. It’s it’s been incredible. Just, you know, I was we’re kicking off this new year in 2023. Just to see what has been built over the last couple years has just been amazing. You know, we continue to have Nat Ambrosey do the magic behind the scenes, preparing episodes, transcribing it and just taking out the production work that’s required to do these episodes. Our sponsors are super critical to our success. So Vector Solutions. Thank you. Let me let me read the blurb real quickly. How will your institution rise to reach today’s socially conscious generation, the students report commitments to safety well being an inclusion are as important to academic rigor when selecting a college it’s time to reimagine the work of student affairs as an investment, not an expense for over 20 years, Vector solutions, which now includes the campus Prevention Network, formerly EverFi has been a partner of choice for 2000 Plus colleges, universities and national organizations would now efficacy studies behind our courses. You can trust and have full confidence that using the standard of care for students safety well being an inclusion, transform the future of your institution and the community you serve Learn more at vectorsolutions.com/studentaffairsnow. This episode is also sponsored by Stylus. We want to encourage you to check out their student affairs, diversity and professional development titles of styluspub.com. Use the promo code SAnow for 30% off all books plus free shipping, including the book that George put out with his colleagues. So definitely check that out. You can find Stylus on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter at Styluspub. Our podcast links I mentioned beginning could not be possible without their support. So please take a minute to visit their website and click on the sponsors link to review. You know kicking off the 2023 with this podcast on this topic on eSports It’s been phenomenal. My name is Glenn DEGuzman. I want to thank everyone for listening and watching and I look forward to seeing you in the future. Have a great day everybody.

E-sports Foundry https://esportsfoundry.com/Trends-in-Collegiate-Esports.html#header2-fp

Check out the latest trends in e-sports

McClellan, G.S,  Arnett R.S., and Hueber, C.M. (2020). 

Fostering Successful Student-Athletes and Successful Programs. Stylus.

Hoffman, J.L., Pauketat, R., and Varzeas, K.A. (2023). Understanding collegiate esports: A practitioner’s guide to developing community and competition. Routledge.

Esports in Higher Education (2021) . United Educators https://www.ue.org/risk-management/athletics/esports-in-higher-education-prepare-your-institution

St. Mary’s University Esports: https://rattlerathletics.com/sports/esports 

University of Oklahoma Esports & Co-Curricular Innovation Department Homepage https://ou.edu/esports See program infrastructure and history of a program originated in Fall 2016