Course Descriptions

This course covers prices and pricing from both managerial and behavioral perspectives in recreation, parks, and tourism settings. While the managerial aspects of pricing include pricing policy/strategy and revenue management (defined as selling perishable service products to the right customer at the right time for the right price), the behavioral aspects include psychology of pricing, price fairness, price perceptions, and willingness-to-pay for non-market goods.

This course explores the conceptual and philosophical foundations of leisure. It provides an in-depth study of past and current theories of leisure and the concepts of play, recreation, work, and time. The course will also investigate the influence of technology and societal changes and the role of leisure in modern day society.

This course covers best practices and emerging models for designing, collecting, and analyzing data used in management of parks and recreation organizations and includes management strategies for applying and communicating evaluation results. Historical and current evaluative management tools will also be examined for their effectiveness in multiple contexts, e.g. VIM, SERVQUAL

This course is designed to introduce the basic principles of group dynamics and functioning. These principles are directly applicable to staff/team development and training, organizational leadership, facilitation, board development, and assessment/evaluation strategies. Students engage theories and models of human and group development, group effectiveness, as well as leadership and facilitation in relation to concerns directly germane to community, private, and commercial recreation setting.

This course explores the range of experiences and perspectives of diverse populations with a particular focus on the leisure experience. A focus will be placed on the experiences of members of minority populations including issues related to race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, social status, age, and disability. Students will be introduced to factors that influence the experience of leisure and leisure service delivery.

This course is designed to help students understand how visitors impact organizations directly and indirectly tied to tourism. The course will examine the visitor experience, and how the experience visitors are looking for impacts management and marketing decisions. The importance of customer service, and the attitudes and perceptions of residents will be reviewed. The course will explore how organizations can prepare for visitors and make strategic decisions with both residents and visitors in mind.

This course will cover topics related to various facets of management of recreation and leisure services. Topics will be determined by REC faculty based on the current needs of the field and interest of students. This course is repeatable in the same term for up to 3 credits.

Possible Topics:

• Leadership
• Strategic Planning
• Legal Issues in Recreation Management

This course is designed to help students understand a variety of collaborative approaches to leisure service delivery. Students will focus heavily on the administration of various types of alternative funding models including fund development, grants, and capital campaigns. In addition, students will build an understanding of collaborative approaches to the operations of leisure service agencies including partnerships, outsourcing, and privatization.

Contemporary Issues in Recreation Management includes topics not covered by present REC courses. The particular topics selected will be determined by the REC faculty according to the current needs of the field and student interest. This course is repeatable in the same term for up to 3 credits.

Possible Topics:

• Contemplative Leisure
• Biophilia
• Self-care
• Slow Leisure
• Sustainability
• Wicked Problems in Recreation

The capstone is designed as a culmination of the graduate program experience. The course will allow students to integrate their skills and knowledge gained over the course of their program into an actionable plan for addressing an issue in recreation or leisure service delivery. The capstone project will require research on the topic of interest, the development of a proposal to address the issue, and formal dissemination of the work. This course will be taken during the student’s final semester in the program.