Doctoral student I-Yun Lee is bridging research and activism to reduce barriers of entry to professional sports organizations
I-Yun Lee
By Jessica Krueger, CLA Student Writer - December 3, 2025
“It’s hard not to be an Eagles fan,” I-Yun Lee said as she gestured to the back wall of her office. There, behind her desk, was a large green Philadelphia Eagles banner. And beside it, a framed copy of the Philadelphia Inquirer, when the Eagles made the newspaper’s frontpage for their 2025 Super Bowl victory.
But it’s not just the Eagles’ win streak that Lee celebrates—it’s the team’s capacity to foster human connection, their potential to create positive change. “When you’re at an Eagles game, it doesn’t matter who is sitting next to you,” she said. “When the Eagles score a touchdown, it’s high fives all around.”
Of course, sports can also create inequities and reinforce harmful systemic structures, Lee said. Efforts of professional sports organizations to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives have not always been successful in accomplishing the DEI goals the organization had originally intended. In other cases, organizations opt for convenient or low-risk initiatives, reducing to tokenism or performative gestures instead of dismantling systemic inequities. As a result, Lee said, many professional sports organizations have done away with or drastically altered their DEI programs.
Lee’s interest in this issue stems partly from personal experience. As an undergraduate student, she was recruited to participate in DEI initiatives hosted by various professional sports organizations. “I would go to these things,” Lee said, “and I just felt like a checkbox.” As Lee was filling out an application for one of the initiatives, she saw a clause at the end of the form which barred international students or those who required a VISA to remain in the US. “And I thought,” Lee said, “if they can do this to international students, they can easily do it to any other group.”
Lee wants to figure out what can be done to make things better—both for the world of sports and for the people who face barriers of entry to it. As a third year doctoral candidate in the School of Language, Culture, and Society’s Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) program, Lee is driven to make professional sports organizations into the platform for community, acceptance, and positivity that she knows they can be.
The best path forward, Lee said, is to bridge research with activism. Her goal is to create an action-oriented, strategic plan—or “playbook,” rather—that professional sports organizations can use to pinpoint where and how a DEI initiative would best fit the institution. “DEI is not one size fits all,” Lee explained. “Organizations need to think things through more and having a strategic plan will help them do that.”
Lee grew up in Taiwan and came to the United States in 2018 to study sport and recreation management at Temple University in Philadelphia. That, Lee said, is when she became an Eagles fan. But she had always been interested in sports—and football especially. Prior to moving to the US full-time, Lee attended various sporting events at the University of Oregon during a visit with her sister. “I just thought it was so cool,” Lee said. “And I thought—that’s what I want to do.”
Through her undergraduate degree program at Temple, Lee secured a summer internship with the Portland Pickles, a baseball team based out of Portland. She worked in a variety of management positions, gaining valuable hands-on experience all the while. Every day was a little bit different, Lee said, depending on the needs of the team. Over the summer, she helped with camera broadcasting, merchandise sales, game scheduling, and team sponsorships. Once, she even got to dress up as the team’s mascot Dillon the Pickle. “It was a fun summer,” Lee said.
After graduating from Temple, Lee attended Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. There, she received a master’s degree in diversity and inclusion. Her research centered on the experiences of women of color as they navigated DEI initiatives sponsored by professional sports organizations.
Outside of her doctoral studies, Lee currently serves as an editorial assistant for Feminist Formations, an interdisciplinary journal that got its start at OSU in 1988. Feminist Formations publishes academic research on feminism, gender, and sexuality. Lee helps to streamline the journal’s submission and peer-review processes.
After completing her doctorate degree at OSU, Lee hopes to be, first and foremost, an agent for change. She doesn’t know yet whether she will stay in academia or enter the sports industry, but is excited to take action wherever she goes. One thing is for sure: if there’s an Eagles bar anywhere around, Lee might just stop by.