Campus Rec Podcast

Welcome to the Director Download, powered by Campus Rec Magazine.

It’s time to go behind the curtain of the director role and have honest discussions with leaders in the campus recreation industry.

In this episode, host Grady Sheffield, the director of campus recreation at Towson University and the senior advisor to the Campus Rec Mastermind Groups, gives you the listener real and authentic conversation between himself and special guest Greg Durham, the director of Recreation and Wellness at Creighton University.

Durham found himself in the director’s seat much quicker than he expected after a journey with various twists and turns. As such, he speaks to being a young and new director both at the university table and in his role as the NIRSA Region V rep.

He and Sheffield chat about Durham’s growth in handling decisions, the surprising thing he had to step away from as a director and overcoming imposter syndrome.

I hope you enjoy the following conversation and walk away with new insight to fuel your own leadership growth.

Welcome to the Director Download, powered by Campus Rec Magazine.

It’s time to go behind the curtain of the director role and have honest discussions with leaders in the campus recreation industry.

In this episode, host Grady Sheffield, the director of campus recreation at Towson University and the senior advisor to the Campus Rec Mastermind Groups, gives you the listener real and authentic conversation between himself and special guests, Silvia Chan and Jay Frain at the University of Connecticut (UConn).

Chan and Frain have been working together at UConn for over 20 years. They’ve learned to work with one another’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as candor and honesty.

The working relationship they have reflects the team atmosphere at UConn Recreation as a whole. Chan and Frain share on how that culture has come about, the shared vision the team works together to form and why they each have stayed in the field.

Plus, the conversation touches on generational differences when it comes to work and how to lead staff in those dissimilarities.

Enjoy the honesty, the banter and more in the conversation that follows.

In this episode, host Grady Sheffield, the director of campus recreation at Towson University and the senior advisor to the Campus Rec Mastermind Groups, gives you the listener real and authentic conversation between himself and special guest, Laura Hall, the director of Recreational Sports at the University of Florida (UF).

In this interview, Hall shares about the unorthodox way she entered campus recreation and the lessons she was able to pull from her unique past experiences — hint, it has to do with coaching.

Eventually, she found herself at Penn State, creating a department through the years only to one day lead it during a pandemic. It was a tough experience and there are things she would have done differently. However, in need of a reset, she found her way to the University of Florida where she’s taken well-being and flexibility to a new level.

Listen to her lessons learned, experiences had and more in the conversation that follows.

In this episode, Grady Sheffield, the director of campus recreation at Towson University and the senior advisor to the Campus Rec Mastermind Groups, gives you the listener real and authentic conversation between himself and special guest, Steven Trotter, the director of well-being at East Carolina University and the founder of Globetrotter Wellness Solutions.

His story starts as he set out to study pharmacy in college, but Trotter soon discovered campus rec along the way. As he fell in love with teaching fitness classes — and gained more and more responsibility — Trotter soon found himself deep in the industry. However, burnout eventually hit.

As such, he shares about the twists and turns his life took to get him to where he is today — heading up well-being at ECU’s forward-thinking campus while running his own consulting company.

And in it all, his goal is to equip people with the tools so they too can be wildly successfully.

Host Grady Sheffield, the director of campus recreation at Towson University and the senior advisor to the Campus Rec Mastermind Groups, gives you the listener real and authentic conversation between himself and special guest, Tiffany Lomax, the director of Campus Recreation and Wellness Promotion at North Carolina Central University.

Lomax’s start in the industry happened before she even knew it and continued because of her desire to study abroad in South Korea.

Soon, she found herself in the world of campus recreation, specifically in marketing at George Washington University. From there, the rest is history!

However, during her time in campus rec Lomax has found herself in a profession where often people see a Black woman first before the rec professional part.

She shares on facing microaggressions like comments made in reference to her coming from an HBCU to challenges like taking on a director role at a predominantly white institution in a predominantly white community in Maine.

She gets real with some of the tough and painful conversations she’s had with staff and leadership when it comes to equity, diversity and inclusion talks that didn’t go well.

Finally, Lomax speaks on belonging, the weight leaders carry and how she knew she was ready to be a director.

Welcome to the Director Download, powered by Campus Rec Magazine.

It’s time to go behind the curtain of the director role and have honest discussions with leaders in the campus recreation industry.

In this episode, host Grady Sheffield, the director of campus recreation at Towson University and the senior advisor to the Campus Rec Mastermind Groups, holds a conversation with special guest, Ryan Hagen, associate athletic director at Yale University.

Prior to Yale, Hagen was at the University of New Haven — and a part of CENTERS — for eight years. As such, he shares what it’s like to work for CENTERS and the business acumen he gained from it. Now, he finds himself at the unique beast that is Yale, sharing what that looks like. Listen to the conversation to also find out what keeps Hagen up at night and how to develop a culture where employees stay.

Welcome to the Director Download, powered by Campus Rec Magazine.

It’s time to go behind the curtain of the director role and have honest discussions with leaders in the campus recreation industry.

Host Grady Sheffield, the director of campus recreation at Towson University and the senior advisor to the Campus Rec Mastermind Groups, gives you the listener real and authentic conversation between himself and special guest, Rachael Finley, the director of York College of Pennsylvania.

Finley gets honest about multiple things in her conversation with Sheffield. She shares on learning about Campus Rec Magazine and its Mastermind Groups’ mission, to her real feelings like nothing mattered in the pandemic. Finley also discusses that hard-to-manage work-life balance, something that most directors can relate to. Finally, the power of trusting your future self is key as she points out in the discussion that follows.

Welcome to the Director Download, powered by Campus Rec Magazine.

It’s time to go behind the curtain of the director role and have honest discussions with leaders in the campus recreation industry.

Host Grady Sheffield, the director of campus recreation at Towson University and the senior advisor to the Campus Rec Mastermind Groups, gives you the listener real and authentic conversation between himself and special guest, Josh Downing, the director of Recreation and Wellness at Butler University.

With four years in his director role, and 16 at Butler, Downing has seen and experienced a lot. In fact, the well-being lens has led to a big shift in not only Butler’s strategic plan, but in the ways Downing leads as well. He and Sheffield dive into their rich, intertwining history in campus recreation, the Okanagan Charter, and much more in the conversation that follows.

There’s much more to an architecture firm then just designing spaces. Fawley Bryant takes this to heart by creating a culture internally that then permeates every project it’s a part of.

In this episode of the Campus Rec Magazine podcast, Rico Francis, the president and co-founder of Peake Media, sits down with Stu Henderson, a partner and the director of design at Fawley Bryant Architecture. They chat about how Henderson came into the world of architecture.

Plus, they dive into the unique aspects of Fawley Bryant, the importance of team and culture, and what the future will hold.

Music "Happy Dance" by Mr Smith: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/mr-smith/fredson-drive/happy-dance-1

Campus Rec Magazine started in 2015 with a simple mission:

To provide best practice business resources that educate and empower campus rec professionals to succeed.

It stemmed from the “Just cause” of our parent company, Peake Media:

To increase healthy lifestyles by educating and empowering health and wellness professionals.

However, Grady Sheffield, the director of campus recreation at Towson University, has been getting the questions, "Who is Campus Rec Magazine? Why are they here doing what they are doing?" from others in the industry. So, he asked Heather Hartmann, the managing editor, to share the heart behind the publication, its events and the latest edition, Mastermind Groups.