Career Report – Scott Arey

Nick Coskren

Penn State University

RPTM 101: Introduction to Recreation Services

Jen Emigh

March 27, 2024

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For my Career Report project, I interviewed Scott Arey, the Associate AD for Events and

Facilities at Northwestern University on February 15, 2024. I chose to interview Scott because

Jennifer James, my boss for my Event Management internship through Penn State Intercollegiate

Athletics, is a mutual connection between him and I. Scott also holds a title that is very similar to

the one that I hope to hold one day for a Power-5 university.

Scott has been at Northwestern since 1991 after completing his undergraduate degree at

Southern Illinois University in 1989, and his master’s degree at the University of Illinois in 1991.

However, Scott had experience in athletics and recreation even before he graduated – he would

often run the scoreboard at Southern Illinois football games. This got him the necessary

experience and connections to pursue a career in the field. In 1991, fresh out of graduate school,

Scott took his first position with Northwestern University as Rec Sports Coordinator and

Director of Intramurals. He then worked as the Assistant Director of Athletic Facilities from

1999-2002, and as Assistant Athletic Director from 2002-10. Scott was named Associate Athletic

Director of Facilities, the position he still holds now, in 2010, and was also given oversight of the

Event Management department upon its inception in 2018 (Northwestern Athletics, n.d.).

Though Scott recounted all this experience to me in great detail, it is also listed on the

Northwestern website.

The mission statement of Northwestern University is: “Northwestern is committed to

excellent teaching, innovative research and the personal and intellectual growth of its students in

a diverse academic community” (Northwestern University, n.d.). This makes sense, as

Northwestern is an academic institution most notably. When I asked Scott about a mission

statement for Northwestern athletics, he was puzzled, and asked me to give him some time. Scott

later told me he found the statement he provided me with from an internal document from a
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while back, which I was able to find online using the quote. It came from the athletic

department’s strategic plan from 2023 called R.I.S.E. Northwestern. The acronym consists of the

first letter of their four core values: respect, integrity, service, and excellence. “The Northwestern

University Department of Athletics & Recreation (NUDAR) is committed to providing an

exceptional student-athlete experience, enriching the intellectual development of all

student-athletes, providing life-changing opportunities, and creating support for the institution

among our many constituents that include students, faculty, staff, alumni, friends, members of

the Chicagoland community, and corporate partners” (R.I.S.E. Northwestern, 2023).

After this, Scott and I got into who Northwestern Athletics serves and what services they

provide to their clientele. It is important to distinguish that when I asked these questions, Scott

answered them framed around the Events and Facilities Department specifically. This is

important because the goals of different departments within an organization can vastly differ.

With that being said, Scott listed an overarching service that his department provides: operational

support for facilities used by Northwestern. This includes anything from having proper staffing

at events, to construction projects, to guest experience. This came to no surprise, as I’m familiar

with all of these aspects – working closely with Penn State’s facilities/events departments. There

certainly are specific facilities required to provide these services, as you can’t play basketball on

football turf or vice versa. Each athletics program will often have its own field/court and

designated arena, unless it can be repurposed for different programs (such as Rec Hall for Penn

State Volleyball and Wrestling).

Furthermore, the clientele Scott told me that his department serves includes students,

alumni, fans, supporters, athletes, and teams. The demographics of these groups are as diverse as

the city of Chicago itself. There are no membership requirements associated with enjoying the
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services that Northwestern provides, unless you’re part of an alumni or similar association and

pay a monthly/yearly fee – or if you count ticket prices as membership requirements. People will

largely come from around the Chicago area to enjoy Northwestern athletics, but some fans – and

many parents of athletes – will travel across the country to watch their beloved Wildcats perform

at the collegiate level.

Scott and I then discussed how his department gets funded, and how they staff it. He said

that, since Northwestern is a private university, the athletic department gets most of its funding

like every other department does – through student tuition and donations. TV deals also play a

part in funding, though the revenue does not go directly to athletics. This was interesting to me,

since Penn State is a public university and gets a lot of its funding straight from the government.

Scott also told me that his department has five full time workers who report directly to Scott,

three unionized grounds crew workers, 1-2 interns, 6-8 part time workers, and 4-5 seasonal

workers (usually for the summer). This was very insightful, especially since I hope to pursue a

career in this field; now I know a little more about the general organizational structure in an

athletic facilities department.

Finally, I closed my interview with Scott with a question about the challenges and

excitements in the field of recreation and his job in collegiate athletics. For challenges, he

mentioned two things: the living wage becoming real, and the burnout factor. Since so many

people want to work in sports, institutions know that they can get away with paying less, since

there is always someone chomping at the bit for an opportunity. He also mentioned the trend of

burnout; more specifically, the gradual process of no longer feeling passion for what you do –

often unlike you first did. These are two very real struggles that are well-documented in athletics.

I have not reached the point in my career that I struggle with either of them, and quite frankly I
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hope I never do. For excitements, Scott mentioned getting to work for such a prestigious

university, and the little things that keep it fresh. Among these would be getting to know the

athletes and coaches, renovation projects, and the success of the teams. I can relate to this a bit in

my experience, as well. In just under two years working in Penn State’s athletic department as an

intern, I’ve gotten to make some pretty solid relationships with the full-time staff, and even some

of the coaches and athletes.

I’m very grateful that I was able to have this interview experience with Scott Arey. It

gave me a lot of perspective on a field that I considered myself well-versed in: boy do I have a

lot to learn. It’s fascinating just how different athletic departments can be even though they work

in the same area and are both university institutions. At the end of the day, all athletic

departments are in the best business in the world – sports. The industry is in a great place moving

forward: with knowledgeable veterans up and down the departments, and bright-eyed newcomers

like myself eager to learn and one day succeed them. Certainly, there is no end in sight to the

meteoric rise of the sports industry.

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References

Northwestern Athletics. (n.d.). Scott Arey. https://nusports.com/staff-directory/scott-arey/28

Northwestern University. (n.d.). University Mission. https://www.northwestern.edu/about/

mission-vision-goals.html#:~:text=University%20Mission,in%20a%20diverse%20acade

mic%20community.

R.I.S.E. Northwestern. (2023). R.I.S.E. Northwestern: A Strategic Plan for Excellence.

https://d81ldo19jx3e0.cloudfront.net/northwestern/strategic-plan/index.html