May 12, 2022
T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY Marshalltown Community College English faculty member and incoming Esports Coach Andrew Goforth speaks during a press conference about the launch of the program at the Faust Student Union on Wednesday afternoon. Dean of Academic Affairs Vincent Boyd, center, and Provost Robin Lilienthal, right, also took the stage at the event.
Esports is, by many metrics, the fastest growing competitive activity on the planet, and leaders at Marshalltown Community College (MCC) aim to stay ahead of the curve by launching a sanctioned team and a management field of study with diploma or associate degree programs in the fall.
During a press conference held at the Faust Student Union on Wednesday afternoon, MCC Provost Robin Lilienthal, Dean of Academic Affairs Vincent Boyd and English Faculty Member/Esports Coach Andrew Goforth addressed the crowd about the team, the program and the future of a blossoming industry — according to one study, the number of full-time esports jobs more than doubled between 2018 and 2019.
“We know that these jobs have not only remote work environments for students who want to stay local, but also transferable skills that can be applied to other industries,” Lilienthal said. “This is an exciting new venture for Marshalltown Community College.”
Boyd thanked several key players including Goforth for their involvement in making esports at MCC a reality and detailed the process of bringing the idea across the finish line. The associate degree management program, Boyd explained, will require 64 credit hours of study, while the diploma program will require 33. Nate Rodemeyer, who is currently a high school esports coach and serves as the president of the Iowa High School Esports Association (IHSEA), will lead the management program as a new faculty member in the fall.
“Already, he and Andrew have been working together so we can find a balance between our athletic offering and our academic program,” Boyd said. “I think it’s going to be really special times upcoming.”
Goforth, who came to the podium last, described a shifting trend in sports viewership. The 2015 League of Legends championships caught more eyeballs than Major League Baseball’s (MLB’s) World Series, and esports now ranks behind only soccer and American football as the third most viewed sport in the world.
“The thing that makes this really personal to me is what this degree program will allow is kids that were like me — kids that may not have been fast enough to play basketball or big enough to play football — they have a chance to be part of an athletic environment, a team environment and get legitimized coaching credential so when they go on the job market as a teacher, a secretary or an IT professional, possibly at a school or a private esports organization, they will have an official credential that legitimizes their knowledge in esports,” Goforth said. “And right now I think that’s a big deal.”
After concluding his remarks, Goforth took several questions from the crowd and shared information about other programs at both the high school and college level. While other postsecondary institutions in Iowa, including at least two other community colleges, have competitive esports teams, the management program is believed to be a rarity within the United States.
“What better way to maybe entice a student that wasn’t necessarily sure about going to college than telling them they can receive college credit by studying video games?” Goforth asked. “The closest program that does anything close to this is in Bowling Green, Ohio, so our academic program is very unique and is going to provide legitimacy to students and an industry that, while gaining a lot of legitimacy, doesn’t necessarily have a lot of it quite yet on an official level.”
According to Goforth, at least 10 students are already signed up for the team in the fall, and his ultimate goal is to land somewhere closer to 50. The previously mentioned IHSEA has grown from 10 members when it launched three years ago to over 60 at the present time, so the high school pipeline is expanding by the day.
The esports team will start playing Overwatch, Rainbow Six Siege and Hearthstone, and Goforth said they will add console games like Super Smash Brothers and Mario Kart on the Nintendo Switch in 2023.
“At the two-year college (level), I want to provide opportunities for student-athletes to come and compete in esports, and of course I want to win. But I also want to make sure that they’re able to finish their education and be able to take things to the next level,” Goforth said.
As a college student at Grand View University in Des Moines, Goforth just missed the esports craze. When he was on the student council, he lobbied for the creation of a program, and it ended up launching in 2016, a year after he graduated. Grand View’s team has since become one of the largest and most successful in the country.
Nevertheless, Goforth, a first-year faculty member, is excited to get in on the ground floor at another school and hopefully make MCC a destination for esports enthusiasts from around the world.
“They were sort of talking about it, and I raised my hand and was like ‘Let’s do this thing. Let’s get it going,” he said. “I kind of offered to work in an advisory role at first, and as it got going, I was like ‘No, you know what? Let’s do this thing.’”
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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or
rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.
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