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uOttawa’s Telfer School of Management to host the exclusive Olympic sport management program

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Black and white image of sprinters dashing from the starting block

uOttawa is the first university outside Europe to host MEMOS, the Executive Masters in Sport Organization Management program with ties to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), in its 30-year history, with the Telfer School of Management having taken over its administration this past July from the Faculty of Health Sciences.

This media release was originally published by the University of Ottawa's media relations team on October 8, 2024. Read the original release.

Telfer’s business school welcomes the administration of this prestigious program that aims to train professionals working in the Olympic Movement, national and international sporting bodies from across the globe. MEMOS students develop the knowledge and skills required to better manage their organisations and so they can build capacity to better support their athletes and national sport systems. The program has alumni in 197 countries and operates with the support of Olympic Solidarity, a department of the IOC.

“When the decision was made to look beyond Europe for a MEMOS host university, uOttawa became a very attractive option since the university is bilingual,” explains Stéphane Brutus, Dean of the Telfer School of Management. “The fact that we are situated in the nation’s capital where many national sport federations are headquartered was an advantage to us, as is the fact that Telfer is a world-class business school.” Though the French and Spanish MEMOS programs continue to be administered by European universities, Telfer will award the university certificate for the French program as it will for the English program.

Professor Milena Parent, a full professor specializing in sport (event) governance and strategy at Telfer and cross-appointed to the School of Human Kinetics at the Faculty of Health Sciences  – and MEMOS’s first female director – now leads the English program at Telfer. Before her, Professor Benoit Séguin, now retired, successfully brought the program to Canada and the Faculty of Health Sciences at uOttawa in 2020.

Parent’s expertise is a natural fit, with her academic research and work focusing on organization theory and strategic management, primarily in the context of major sports events like the Olympic Games. Her work also includes the study of governance and the management of the relationships between organizing committees and their various stakeholders.

“Olympic Solidarity, the sport development arm of the IOC, was keen to work with the University of Ottawa, which was a feather in our cap, knowing we are not only a bilingual university but also located close to the policy and decision makers in the national sport system. uOttawa and the School of Human Kinetics from the Faculty of Health Sciences also have a history of sport management education at the graduate level since 1980, so we have the experience in this regard,” explains Parent.

National Olympic Committees are limited to submitting one candidature per country for MEMOS, and other national and international sport organizations can submit one independent candidate. Competition is fierce in this coveted program, with less than half of the over 80 applications accepted yearly. This year’s students will begin the academic year in Olympia, Greece, site of the ancient Games, and finish their year at the home of the modern Games at Olympic House in Lausanne, Switzerland.

“Telfer will be managing the MEMOS program which welcomes leaders of the Olympic world, from national and international sporting body presidents, secretaries general, managers and IOC members - people who are making global decisions related to the world of sport,” says Parent.