A coach — that’s what Mary McDonald dreamed about becoming when she was a little girl. And for about nine years of her career, she made that dream a reality.          

McDonald came to the Ivan Allen College in the fall of 2013 to head the new initiative in sports, society, and technology in the School of History, Technology, and Society (HTS).

 “I was a college basketball player, so it made sense to go into coaching collegiate women’s basketball,” said McDonald, the Homer Rice chair in sports and society in HTS. “What I really loved was to get to see people learn and progress. What I didn’t enjoy was recruiting.”

McDonald always felt students should attend a university because it was a good academic fit — not because of athletics. She was also a “budding sociologist” who was increasingly interested in the implications sports had on society.

“So, I left my position as head coach of the women’s team at Bemidji State University to go to the University of Iowa and earn my Ph.D.,” McDonald added. “Since I grew up in the era right after Title IX was established, I was really interested in how gender impacts sports, so that became my research focus and has been for more than 19 years.”

After spending several years teaching in the Sports Studies Program at Miami University in Ohio, she arrived in Atlanta in the fall of 2013 and has already been successful at creating an academic minor in sports studies for undergraduates. In addition to working with students, teaching an undergraduate course on gender and sports, conducting research, and serving on various institute committees, she works to connect people at Tech who are doing sports-related research and put together panels and lectures that highlight this research.

“Have you ever stopped to think about the fact that sports are one of the last areas of our society that are segregated by gender? Thinking about the whys of this is what fascinate me and led me to focus on this question of how gender and sports influence each other,” said McDonald, adding that “for most universities, college sports aren’t a huge moneymaker. As a matter of fact, only a handful of universities bring in more money than what they spend on their sports programs.”

Making the transition from coaching to teaching was the greatest risk I’ve ever taken. I didn’t know if people in higher education would take me seriously — but thankfully, they did.