Fellowships and Scholarships

The Pam Borton Endowment for the Promotion of Girls and Women in Sport Leadership

The Pam Borton Fellowship, established in 2014, honors Coach Pam Borton's exceptional career as coach of Gopher Women's Basketball and her commitment to encouraging women and girls to reach their full potential. The mission of the Fellowship is to promote and support graduate students in the College of Education and Human Development who are studying kinesiology and who are pursuing research in conjunction with the Tucker Center that is related to leadership, sport, and gender or research that examines the mechanisms, role, and impact of sport on leadership development among girls and women.

The Tucker Center Summer Borton Fellows are graduate students who advance and amplify the TC's education, research and outreach while gaining a unique, career-advancing experience with peers from around the country, world-class TC affiliated scholars, and TC faculty. Each summer the Borton Fellow produces the NCAA D-I Women in College Coaching Report Card™ by leading the Gender Equity intern team. Fellows also co-author and produce special reports, such as athletic administration best practices of recruitment, hiring and retention of female collegiate coaches, prepare manuscripts for publication, create infographics and Game On: Women Can Coach toolkit pieces, and help write grants. During the summer of 2019 the Borton Fellow designed and delivered a once-a-week physical activity program for a cohort of 50 girls who were part of the U of M Girls Inc/YWCA Eureka! Summer program that mentors and empowers girls into STEM fields. The Borton Fellows also help with initial planning for the spring Women Coaches Symposium and the fall Distinguished Lecture Series.

2022-23 Borton Fellow

Anna Goorevich, (she/her/hers) is a graduate student pursuing a PhD in Kinesiology/Sport Sociology at the University of Minnesota, where she also serves as a Research Assistant in the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport. Previously, she was the 2021-2022 US-UK Fulbright Postgraduate Scholar at the University of Stirling in Scotland where she received a master’s degree in Sport Management. Goorevich’s research interests revolve around the gendering of coaching and sport leadership, gender identity and sport participation, and menstruation and sport. Her previous research background has involved studies of coaching and gender essentialism, transgender athlete inclusion in sport, coach-athlete relationships surrounding menstruation, and gender inequity in youth soccer programs in the UK.

2022-23 Borton Fellow

Hannah Silva-Breen, MS, first joined the Tucker Team as a Gender Equity Summer intern for the 2017, and 2018 summer. Silva-Breen took her BA from Gustavus Adolphus College in psychology and exercise physiology, and worked at The Emily Program: Anna Westin House, as well as coaching club basketball for 10-plus years with the Minnesota Suns. She took her Masters in kinesiology with a focus on sport and exercise psychology from the U of M in the spring of 2022 and will begin a doctoral program at West Virginia University (WVU) in Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology while simultaneously pursuing a Master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. Silva-Breen’s ultimate goal is to earn a university position teaching, conducting research, and providing counseling services for athletes with disordered eating, eating disorders, and other mind-body issues.

2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22 Borton Fellow

Courtney Boucher, Ph.D. student in sport sociology (Nicole M. LaVoi, adviser) and Tucker Center Research Assistant, received her B.A. in Chemistry from Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, MN, where she also played ice hockey. Upon graduation, she served as Gustavus' Assistant Women's Hockey Coach from 2015-17. She finished her M.S. at the U of M ('19) by examining hiring practices of athletic directors in NCAA D-I institutions over five years, an offshoot of the Women in College Coaching Report Card.

2017-18 & 2018-19 Borton Fellow

Matea Wasend graduated with an M.S. in Sport Sociology ('18; Nicole M. LaVoi, adviser) in the School of Kinesiology at the University of Minnesota, with a focus on women in coaching. She worked as a Research Assistant in the Tucker Center and a Teaching Assistant within the School of Kinesiology. Wasend also coached soccer with the Saint Paul Blackhawks Soccer Club. She graduated from Macalester College in St. Paul, where she studied English and Media Studies and played soccer. As a Borton Fellow, Wasend helped to write and edit the 10-year installment of the Tucker Center Research Report, and co-authored a report on best practices for athletic directors looking to recruit, hire and retain women coaches. She is applying for Law School entrance for the fall of 2020.

2016-17 Borton Fellow

Caroline Heffernan obtained her Ph.D. in Sport Management ('17; Dr. Lisa Kihl, adviser) in the School of Kinesiology at the University of Minnesota. Heffernan received her undergraduate degree in Psychology from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania where she also played field hockey, basketball, and lacrosse. She served as Bryn Mawr's Assistant Field Hockey Coach while attending Temple University, where she earned a Master's Degree in Sport & Recreation Management. Heffernan’s research focuses on how women and men can work as allies within sport organizations to create more opportunities for women to advance to higher leadership positions. As part of her Fellowship, Heffernan worked on analyzing data around the Women in College Coaching Report Card. Currently Dr. Heffernan is an assistant professor of Sport Management at Temple University.

2015-16 Borton Fellow

Marnie Kinnaird earned her M.S. degree in Sport and Exercise Psychology (Dr. Nicole M. LaVoi, adviser), in the School of Kinesiology at the University of Minnesota where she examined resilience in female coaches for her thesis. Her love of running inspired her to major in kinesiology at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA. Marnie was involved with data collection and analysis for projects related to female coach turnover and retention. Currently she is an Executive Assistant in the San Francisco office of Peer Health Exchange, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing health equity in young people by training college students to teach a skills-based health curriculum in under-resourced high schools across the country.