Syracuse, N.Y. (NCC News) — Syracuse University’s newest major will prepare students to enter into one of the fastest-growing industries in the world: esports.
Esports is short for “electronic sports,” and it includes any multiplayer video game played competitively for an audience.
SU students can major in esports as soon as next semester, according to Olivia Stomski, the director of the Sports Media Center at the Newhouse School of Public Communications.
“We’d rather do it right than rush it. I would not be surprised if by the Fall of 2023, we have courses ready for enrollment, and the right people in the right place. But I can guarantee that by Fall of 2024, students will be able to major in esports,” Stomski said.
The new program will feature three distinctive tracks. Students will be able to choose a concentration in business and management, communications, or media and design. The business and management track will feature classes on subjects such as venue management, entrepreneurship and hospitality. The communications track will focus on broadcasting, reporting and production. The media and design track is intended to teach students about storytelling, animation and graphic design in esports games.
“We’re hoping we’re preparing esports journalists, producers, writers, event managers, agents, and game developers,” Stomski said.
One student who says he is excited about the new program is Braeden Cheverie-Leonard. The freshman is a co-captain of SU’s competitive Call of Duty team and a member of the committee developing the new esports major.
“I always say esports is the fastest growing industry in the world,” said Cheverie-Leonard, adding that he thinks “the major is just going to really prepare people for the ever-changing industry.”
Cheverie-Leonard and his teammates compete in the Competitive COD League, or CCL, against other college and university squads across the Northeast region. He says playing on the team has allowed him to see first-hand how fast the popularity of esports has increased on the Syracuse campus.
“Since I got here, it’s gone through the roof. We opened a student section and that pretty much fills up every game that we have,” Cheverie-Leonard said.
The Call of Duty team, which is in its first season, practices and competes in the Esports Room in the Barnes Center at the Arch. Stomski sat on the board that planned and developed the facility, which is open to all Syracuse students, not just those on competitive teams. She said it’s taken time to get support for moving esports from the campus recreational center into the classroom.
“We had a lot of people saying, ‘You’ll never be a millionaire playing video games.’ And we had to really look at it and say, ‘Actually you might be, and here’s how,’” Stomski said.
The new esports major is a joint program between the Newhouse School and Falk College. Stomski says Newhouse alone is offering 11 brand new courses as part of the curriculum.
“We sat down and really looked at what we could create,” said Stomski, adding that it took “hours and hours of locking ourselves in rooms and reaching out to industry professionals that we knew, but also that we didn’t know, and doing research on other universities that did have programs.”
With the curriculum now finished and awaiting approval, Stomski says the development of the new program is in its final phases.
“Now, we’re in the stage of finding an executive director for this program to lead us into the unknown—and hopefully that’s the exciting, not scary, unknown. And then we will be moving forward with adding faculty and staff to this program and seeing how we can hit the ground running with the right people in the right places,” Stomski said.