Intern becomes faculty
Recent IUPUI graduate Janel Chittum went from interning with the Greyhound Club under Associate Director of Athletics Matt Donovan and Assistant Director of Athletic Development and Marketing Erica Riley to accepting a position there in August.
Riley left the school to accept a job offer at DePauw University and Donovan said there were big shoes to fill when Riley left.
“Erica Riley was a wonderful person, wonderful colleague and a great asset to our department. I would be very disappointed if I didn’t say we wanted to find someone who could fit the same tremendous impact that Erica provided,” Donovan said. “I know those are big shoes to fill, but when you have someone who was as wonderful as Erica Riley was, you always want to try to find someone who can help you continue to grow.”
Donovan believes the Athletics Department found that person in Chittum.
Chittum
“She’s a wonderful individual, has a great background, true understanding of athletics and a true understanding of the institution,” Donovan said. “To Janel [Chittum]’s credit, she had some great assets that will continue to help us grow.”
Chittum graduated from IUPUI last May with a sports management major and a minor in business.
She began her internship with the Greyhound Club on Jan. 3. When her internship was up in May, she asked Donovan if she could stay on for the summer.
Chittum said that she didn’t know that much about golf, and since there were golf outings in the summer, she saw this as a way to gain experience.
She stayed on until August, applied for the position, interviewed with six other applicants and got the job.
Chittum didn’t always foresee an athletics-related job in her future.
She actually started out as a dental hygiene major before she went to her guidance counselor and took out a questionnaire that paired her with different majors.
“It had a list of all these different majors that IUPUI offers that would correlate with my personality and attitude and sports management was on there,” Chittum said. “I had never heard anything about it, didn’t know what it was, so I thought ‘Ok, I’ll do some research.’ I checked into it and was like ‘That’s awesome. I’d love to do that!’ So that’s how I ended up here. I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
The marketing aspect was recently taken from the title that Riley held and given to two graduate assistants.
Although Chittum will still oversee marketing and be there as a resource to the graduate assistants, her official title is Assistant Director of Athletic Development.
Chittum is in charge of planning and implementing events, such as the golf events over the summer and the campus mile fun-run.
Her job is to bring in sponsorships, and through that, bring in money for student-athletes.
Chittum loves her job and the atmosphere and says that her biggest challenge is her lack of professional knowledge.
“I just graduated in May. I only know what the books taught me and what I learned over my nine months interning with Matt [Donovan],” Chittum said. “Coming into it at 22, I still have a lot to learn and I know that I do so my biggest challenge is just being open to learning and I fully accept that responsibility.”
Chittum said that she has been taking every opportunity to learn new things and ask questions since the day she started her internship.
“If I sit here and show you that I’m willing to learn and work hard, then that makes up for lack of knowledge. You will learn. People can teach you, but people can’t teach you how to work hard,” Chittum said. “That’s what Matt [Donovan] saw. He saw that I would always come in earlier than everybody and I would stay late, just because I liked it here. I wanted to do that. Sometimes I wanted to be here more than I wanted to be home. It’s not work if you enjoy it.”
