Shippensburg University Athletics

Melissa Hazzard serves Shippensburg University as its Director of Recreations. She is in her 2^nd year as Director, having also served as the Assistant Director and then Associate Director of Recreation and Wellness over her 14 year career at Ship.
 
Hazzard assumed the assistant director position in June 2008 and was the first person to start the position with the opening of ShipRec. 
 
As the Director of Recreation, Hazzard has direct responsibility and oversight of all indoor and outdoor recreational opportunities on campus. She has impacted the entire campus community and supported students in a variety of different ways.
 
ShipRec, offers 10 - 15 group fitness classes per week including spinning, yoga, cardio kickboxing, Zumba, and others. The classes cater to a variety of interests and fitness levels, and instructors are both students and external vendors.
 
Alongside fitness classes, Hazzard deals with intramurals and club activities, that operates four to five nights per week with league offerings and special events such as tournaments and drop-in events. Hazzard also oversees student leaders of 14 club sport programs, student organizations competing in individual and team sports against outside clubs and institutions.
 
In the ShipRec there is also ShipShare bike lending service that allows the campus community to check-out a bike for 3 hours with SU ID. This service allows students to explore campus bike routes, run errands in town, or enjoy the nearby rail trail. Not only bikes, but also offer different equipment lending service for the campus community. Many individual students, student organizations, departments, and facility users’ requests to borrow sports equipment and related supplies for use during individual play and special events throughout the year.
 
Alongside the clubs and equipment’s, facility management is also oversees by Hazzard, including all indoor and outdoor and recreational facilities. Hazzard and her team of graduate assistants works on logistics and coordination of facility staffing, access management, event and programming scheduling and set-ups, facility and equipment maintenance, is a daily responsibility for the entire department. The significant outdoor recreational space on campus is the Student Rec Complex, the site of several softball fields and multipurpose spaces, basketball courts, sand courts, ½ mile walking path, two picnic pavilions, a street hockey rink, and a 9-hole disc golf course. Hazzard also manages all operations in this 12-acre facility, which is lighted daily, weather-permitting, and provides a wonderful opportunity for drop-in recreation, as well as intramural, club sport, and special event use by the campus community.
 
Hazzard also oversees all open swim opportunities at Heiges Field House pool, offering approximately 20-25 hours per week, with periods scheduled around varsity swim team use and lifeguard availability.
 
Hazzard leads four graduate assistants that help her run ShipRec, and directs approximately 60-70 students in the department, one of the largest employers of students on campus. She oversees employees that takes on several roles within the department.
 
Before Shippensburg, Hazzard worked as an assistant of campus rec at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), operating the new Zesiger Center. After her time at MIT, she left campus recreation to be the coordinator of all youth and adults sports programming and fitness operations at YMCA in Massachusetts.
 
Hazzard earned her Bachelor of Arts in Exercise Science at Gettysburg College in 2000 where she also competed as a student-athlete in the sport of softball. She earned her master’s degree in Kinesiology in 2002 from the University of New Hampshire, where she worked as the graduate assistant in the exercise physiology lab and gained experience conducting environmental fitness research on Division I athletes.