- Alumna; On campus
As a high school athlete, Melissa Conti '98 was courted by college recruiters to play basketball.
She chose SNHU and discovered sport management.
“I fell into it,” she says of the major that won her heart.
Today, Melissa is the assistant commissioner for the Colonial Athletic Association, an NCAA Division I college athletic conference in Richmond, Va. The conference is made up of 22 men’s and women’s sports, representing 12 East Coast schools from Massachusetts to Georgia.
“It definitely laid the foundation for some of the things I deal with,” Melissa says of her SNHU classes in sport management. “I had a facility management class, and when I’m going out to venues for championships, I have a better understanding of what the facility director is looking for.”
The SNHU alumna says that internships, including one with the America East Conference in Boston and several in Albany, N.Y., her hometown, gave her a taste of the real world.
So did her professors.
“Professor Blais encouraged us to do it, and he’d go out and volunteer with us,” she says. “No matter which professor I had, they were very helpful, always there for you, and really helped you become an adult and prepare you for what lies ahead.”
