Point Park Offers Esports Program Facilitator Certificate Tuesday, April 8, 2025
Point Park University’s Center for Experiential Narrative Technologies and School of Continuing and Professional Studies announce a new online certificate program designed for esports program facilitators. The four-course certificate will cover topics such as the fundamentals of starting and running an esports program in a school setting, how to leverage social media and digital engagement, and the process of planning and hosting an esports tournament.
The course will be co-taught by Dr. Donald Marinelli, founding director of CENT, and Chris Gaul, assistant director of CENT and Point Park’s esports director and coach.
Gaul has been involved with collegiate esports for over a decade and brings his hands-on experience as a coach to the classroom.
Marinelli has been engaged with developing technology since 1999, when he co-founded the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. Later, he consulted with Inven Korea, an esports company, during their expansion to the U.S., when it became Inven Global. He brings the big picture perspective to the program.
Marinelli sees esports as a growing industry and wants educators to be prepared to respond to the interest of their students.
“Gaming is part and parcel of a young person growing up,” Marinelli said. “So how do we take their interest and turn it into something meaningful for them?” The answer, he said, is esports.
“Esports is teamwork. Not every kid is going to play an active sport, and esports is an opportunity to work with others, to learn with others, to fail and learn from failure.”
But this experience won’t happen without good leadership. Hence the need for such a certificate program.
Gaul said, “We felt like there was a large opportunity for schools that want to create an esports program but don’t have experience, or for those who want to make their program better. A lot of schools are saying, ‘This is something we should be involved in, but we need someone to do it.’”
Usually, Marinelli said, the person tasked with running the program is a teacher who happens to be available. “And yet the young people do have aspirations. They love gaming and wonder, ‘Where could this possibly lead?’ This certificate program is designed to educate those teachers, those coaches, and mentors about the lay of the land in esports.”
Gaul believes the certificate program could be equally useful for a current or aspiring esports coach as well as the administrators who oversee the department. “It would help an administrator to learn more about who they should hire and what the esports program should or shouldn’t be doing,” Gaul said.
The first course, Esports Fundamentals, will be offered asynchronously online June 30 to August 15. Registration opens on April 21. Find out more on the CENT website.