KENNESAW, Ga. |
Feb 16, 2026
Kennesaw State University alumnus Javon Tucker ’23 is acquainted with the outdated saying that it’s best to by no means meet your heroes. The Bachelor of Science in Sport Management graduate had that in thoughts when he transferred to KSU in 2021 and observed a well-known
identify on his class schedule.
He was enrolled in affiliate professor B. Nalani Butler’s sport management course, and he puzzled the place he had seen her identify earlier than. He found that she had co-written a textbook utilized in a course at his earlier establishment, one he had learn with pleasure. Within the primary few courses, he realized Butler was particular.
“They say to never meet your heroes, but I would have to disagree,” mentioned Tucker, now the coordinator of recreation operations and broadcasting for the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream. “Meeting her was a full circle moment for me, having worked with the textbook she wrote. Dr. Butler has been so much more than a mentor and an inspiration for me, she’s become a friend and a peer.”
Butler joined KSU’s college in 2019, bringing together with her important experience in sport and tradition, sports activities amenities, occasion management, and sports activities administration. Along with Ronald Woods, an adjunct professor of well being science and human efficiency on the University of Tampa, she co-authored “Social Issues in Sport,” now in its fifth version and a staple of literature in sport management majors.
As a researcher, she has examined and printed scholarly work on each voluntary and involuntary migration amongst athletes and coaches who relocate internationally for aggressive sport alternatives. Recently Butler has printed and offered on inclusive sports activities, getting KSU college students concerned with Special Olympics, the place college students work with athletes who’ve an mental incapacity, and study to navigate learn how to make sport participation inclusive for everybody; together with KSU’s personal Academy for Inclusive Learning and Social Growth situated in Wellstar College of Health and Human Services.
As an teacher, Butler has taught courses in amenities, occasion management, worldwide
sports activities, and the sociology of sports activities. For the sport management majors she teaches at
KSU, she goals to offer them instruments they’ll use within the skilled world.
“I want every student in my classes to come away with a bullet point for their resumes,” mentioned Butler, who performed soccer at Xavier University in Ohio. “The events class is one of my favorite classes to teach, and when they do their exit interviews for the major, I’ve been told that class gets the most traction. A lot of students had said this class got them the job they were seeking.”
Tucker earned his bullet level within the occasions class, and mentioned his expertise helped him rent on with the Dream. A tour of Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium made him conscious of the profession prospects in amenities and occasion management, constructing on what he realized at school.
“It’s one thing to learn about these things in class, but when we toured the Benz, they were converting it from football to soccer, and I learned a lot that day about stadium operations,” he mentioned. “That really opened my eyes to something I could make a career.”
For senior sport management main Alejandra Tobon, Butler’s affect got here to bear throughout a case research competitors hosted by the U.S. Soccer Federation. Butler recruited her out of the sport sociology class in Spring 2025 for networking alternatives with the federation, in addition to for the case research competitors, which came about final fall.
Along with KSU graduate DJ Rieker ’25 and present college students Maya Phillips and Tiffany Au, Tobon helped create a promotion plan to create curiosity within the NCAA males’s soccer match. Teams offered their plan to a panel of federation officers, who narrowed the sector to twenty finalists for one more spherical of displays at Clark Atlanta University.
Among roughly 100 groups, the KSU group completed third within the competitors. Tobon mentioned the staff owed its success to Butler’s experience in soccer in addition to her deep information of the executive points of sports activities to say nothing of the professor’s power and keenness.
“She has so many connections and loves to spread awareness to all these things in sports, like the case study competition,” mentioned Tobon, who at present works with KSU’s athletics division as a communications intern. “If it weren’t for her, I’d still be so shy, but now I know how to network and talk to people. She’s one of the best mentors I’ve ever had.”
Beyond championing pupil success, Butler has made a big mark in analysis. She lately gained the Office of Research’s Apex Award as one of many prime three researchers within the Wellstar College. She maintains a various portfolio of courses and research, and he or she’s simply as curious as anybody to see what’s subsequent.
“I’m doing a lot of everything, and that’s what I like about being a professor at KSU,” she mentioned. “What’s been the coolest thing at KSU is how organically everything has been thanks to students who have gone on to do cool things, now wanting to come back to help my classes. It’s a real full-circle moment.”
– Story by Dave Shelles
Photos by Matt Yung
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A frontrunner in progressive instructing and studying, Kennesaw State University affords undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels to its greater than 51,000 college students. Kennesaw State is a member of the University System of Georgia with 11 educational faculties. The college’s vibrant campus tradition, various inhabitants, sturdy world ties, and entrepreneurial spirit draw college students from all through the nation and the world. Kennesaw State is a Carnegie-designated doctoral analysis establishment (R2), inserting it amongst an elite group of solely 8 % of U.S. faculties and universities with an R1 or R2 standing. For extra info, go to kennesaw.edu.