Faculty and Staff

Robertha Abney is an associate professor at Slippery Rock University in the Sport Management Program. She graduated with a Ph.D in athletic administration from the University of Iowa. Her areas of research include role models and mentoring women in sport (WOMENTORING), and the status of minorities and women in leadership roles in sport.

At SRU, she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in sport management and ethics, sport communication and introduction to sport management. She is currently a board member on the Commission on Sport Management Accreditation (COSMA). She has written several chapters in sport management textbooks.

She served on six committees within the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) during her tenure as associate athletic director and senior woman administrator at Slippery Rock University. She served on the NCAA Division II Management Council, Management Council Subcommittee, Committee on Infractions, Administrative Review Subcommittee, Championship Task Force Committee, and Project Team to Review Issues Related to Diversity. Also, she served on the American Alliance for Health Physical Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD) Awards Committee. She is a past president of the National Association for Girls and Women in Sport (NAGWS). Dr. Abney was selected to represent the International Council for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Dance and Sport in Beijing, China.

Email:  robertha.abney@sru.edu
Phone:  724.738.2769

Clerical Assistant 2
Department of Communication, Media and Sport Managment

Email: hannah.azarian@sru.edu
Phone:  (724) 738-4111

Dr. Brian Crow is a professor in Sport Management Program at Slippery Rock University, where he teaches Sport Marketing, Budgeting, and Global Sport Management.  He held previous faculty appointments at Hampton University and the University of Southern Mississippi.

Crow earned a Doctor of Education degree in Higher Education Administration (1994) and a Master of Business Administration degree (1991) from West Virginia University, as well as a Bachelor of Science degree in marketing from West Liberty State College (1988).

As a consultant, Crow founded GameDay Consulting, LLC, in 2004 and has developed guest service training workshops for thousands of front-line employees and conducted mystery shops for the Buffalo Bills, Pittsburgh Steelers, Baltimore Ravens, Houston Texans, West Virginia University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Kentucky, University of Oregon, and Bowling Green State University in recent years.

Dr. Crow was the President of the North American Society for Sport Management (NASSM). Prior to this election, Crow was NASSM's Business Office Manager for two years and a Member-at-Large on the Executive Council. Crow also served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Sport Marketing Quarterly. He is a founding board member of the Sport Marketing Association.

Crow is a co-author of two textbooks: Foundations of Sport Management (now in its 3rd edition) and Profiles of Sport Industry Professionals: the People Who Make the Games Happen. He is also the author or co-author of nine textbook chapters and two law review articles on a variety of sport-related topics. He has spoken at more than three dozen colleges and universities related to hazing in athletics since 2003.

He has published in the areas of sport marketing, athletic hazing, and other sport related issues. He has made more than 90 international, national, and regional presentations of his research throughout the United States, Canada, and in Costa Rica.

Email:  brian.crow@sru.edu
Phone:  724.738.2392

Dr. Robert Zullo joined the Sport Management Program in fall of 2023.  Prior to joining the faculty at SRU, he taught at James Madison University and Mississippi State University. He has worked in intercollegiate athletics at the University of Georgia, Virginia Tech, and the University of North Carolina. He started his career in intercollegiate athletics administration through experiences with the University of Virginia athletics department and the Virginia Military Institute. He is a member of the North American Society of Sport Management (NASSM), the American Marketing Association (AMA), the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS), and formerly the National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators (NACMA) and National Intramural-Recreational Sports Association (NIRSA). Active in research, he helped to write and edit the textbook Administration of Intercollegiate Athletics and serves on the Planning Committee for the Pennsylvania Sport Business Conference (PASBC). He earned his doctorate from the University of Georgia with separate degrees from the University of Virginia and the University of North Carolina.