CoSIDA Postgraduate Scholarship Recipients – Where Are They Now?
College Sports Information Directors of America
Second in a series
For more information regarding the deadlines - all in April 2017 - for the 2017 postgraduate scholarship and other CoSIDA scholarships and grants, go to http://www.cosida.com/sports/2014/1/30/scholarshipgrants_program.aspx
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Jared Verner
Current position: Associate Athletic Director for Sports Information and External Relations, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
Undergraduate school: Northwest Missouri State University, 2008
Graduate school: Northwest Missouri State University
How did the CoSIDA scholarship help advance your career?
The scholarship was part of the larger experience that everyone at Northwest was able to provide. I had great bosses (Chad Waller, Bryan Boettcher, Dr. Bob Boerigter) who let me jump right in, who mentored me when I made mistakes and who gave me some great experiences. When I was looking at full-time positions a year later, the scholarship helped provide that verification that I needed to secure a position early in the hiring season.
How were you encouraged to apply for the scholarship?
I had applied for the undergraduate scholarship the year before and didn’t receive it, so when I applied going into graduate school, I don’t know if I would call myself confident that I would receive it. When I looked a previous winners, and saw a lot of Division I recipients, I went in seeing if I would be able to prove that a Division II kid might be able to pull it off.
What was it like to be notified as a scholarship recipient?
I don’t remember the actual notification, but I remember what happened when the director decided to announce it. It was during the summer, and when Bryan Boettcher posted it online, and I got a call from Matt Newbery at the MIAA because he wanted to include my hometown for the conference’s announcement. After that, and it went out across the league, I received a call from Shawn Jones (now the Henderson State AD, but at the time was at Central Missouri as an Associate AD), and it turned out we both came from the same small town of Armstrong, Mo.
What have been some of the highlights of your athletics communications career to date?
I’ve been extremely fortunate to work with some great ADs and coaching staffs in my two schools since Northwest. I hear the stories about how demanding some coaches are, or how peers across campus don’t understand the workload, and I haven’t had those experiences yet. I was lucky to be named to the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference’s SID of the Year last year, and in a year when I thought the conference had the deepest level of talent since I’d been in the league. I’ve also been fortunate to be a member of the department’s administrative team and within the campus communications office. While not necessarily highlights, I’ve had the ability to assist in the response when we had a police officer killed while answering an off-campus call, and when I set up a multi-agency Joint Information Center during a presidential campaign event. Our campus communications director worked with Doug Vance when they were both at Kansas, and I’ve been lucky to have someone across campus who knows how athletics integrates with the campus, and how athletics can assist in large campus needs.