Amanda Knight has come to Lasell University because of a change of direction at UMass Amherst.
Knight is Lasell’s new director of student activities and orientation, with an office on the second floor of Arnow. She began her work in the first week of December. Her responsibilities include supporting and managing Lasell clubs and organizations, and planning and organizing large-scale events, such as commencement, orientation, and family, friends, and alumni weekend. So far, she likes the fit very much, she said.
“The students live more authentically and there’s more community within the student body [at Lasell, compared with at UMass],” she said during an interview on Jan. 23, 2025, in the Science and Technology Center.
Before Lasell, the well-traveled Knight had always worked in college athletics in some manner. She was born in Cleveland before the family moved to upstate New York, and then she went to high school in Georgia. She swam, and played basketball, soccer, and volleyball. She was offered a track scholarship (shot put and discus) to go to Georgia Southern University.
She was going to major in psychology and minor in music, but her mother wanted her to go into sports.
She got an internship at Grambling State University working in the athletic department’s compliance department. That was followed by moves to North Carolina to Texas and then to Miami. When she was considering taking a job at UMass, her friends were baffled about her wanting to go north where it was cold.
At UMass, she was the senior associate athletic director for student-athlete experience, and oversaw six different groups involving some three dozen people. They were spread among six groups who worked directly with student-athletes: academics, mental health, nutrition, athletic training, sports performance, and student-athlete development being the points of focus.
She said if she could change one thing about college athletics it would be mental health.
“Counseling and HR are underfunded...you can’t have success without mental health.”
She was at UMass for 18 months before she was let go because her boss “wanted to go in a different direction. It was that simple. There was another person he wanted for the job and I was fired.”
She never wanted to be an athletic director or a sports information director, so when she saw the Lasell job posting on its website, she was attracted by the opportunity to work closely with the student body.
She already has a lot of plans, in- cluding having Welcome Week extend- ed to a Welcome Month. She also wants clubs to collaborate more with each other on events.
Now nearly 40 and newly engaged, Knight has entered a new chapter in life with new beginnings.
“There’s no such thing as closure,” she said. “You have to close it yourself.”
(Story reported and written by the students in the Com 209: Intro to Journalism class: Asma Bahira, Sierra Berry, Kayleigh Bollin, Alison Cohen, Kaley Conlon, Marija Ducki, Kiera Gorrasi, Morgan Healy, Daniel Iannuzzo, Tevin Johnson, Vaughn Kimball, Grace Martin, Nicole Parrella Vaughn, Andres Saenz, Astara Shubert, Griffin Smith, Olivia Sousa, and Jillian Wallace.)
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