With Utah preparing to again host the Winter Games in eight years, the University of Utah is turning an academic eye toward the Olympics means for the communities helping stage the world's largest sports festival.
On Tuesday, U trustees approved the proposed Olympic Research Center for Societal Impact, designed to help establish Utah as a world-leading hub where economic insights, environmental science, business ethics, and sustainability expertise intersect to shape the future of international sports.
The plan was developed by the U's Colleges of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) and will be led by the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute and the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy.
"We want to be a research hub that would measure and communicate social, environmental and economic impacts of hosting Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games and other large-scale sporting events," said Natalie Gochnour, director of the Gardner Institute and a key architect of the proposal. "This is work that we've been doing for years in this state and we're trying to ramp it up as we progress towards 2034. Both the Wilkes Center and the Gardner Institute are already doing a lot of this work. What we would do now is expand that work, lean into that work. And as we build up to the 2034 Games, provide more opportunities for people on campus to be a part of this research center."
Gochnour will co-direct the new center with John Lin, the Wilkes Center's scientific director and a professor of atmospheric sciences.
"What we're doing here is building on legacy. We have an opportunity here to seize the moment and have a real impact. We're hoping to have a research hub that has several pillars focusing on societal, environmental, and economic impacts," Lin told the trustees. "It's still eight years off. Through those eight years, we have had opportunities to engage students with classes, meetings and research, both at undergrad and graduate levels."
U President Taylor Randall strongly endorsed the proposed research center, linking it to the U's broader Olympics strategy that will be unfolding over the coming year.
"We will be in 2034, the only university in the world to have hosted in two Olympic Games. We feel like this is an important investment for the enduring legacy of those Games and how they interacted with our campus," Randall told the trustees. "We have to get going on this right now. I know it's a few years away, but to get things and assets in place, we've got to get moving now."
At the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Games, Opening and Closing ceremonies were staged at the U's Rice-Eccles Stadium and the athletes were housed in campus dorms. The U expects to house up to 3,000 athletes during the 2034 Games. Meanwhile, numerous U athletes have competed at the Olympic level, including 31 who appeared at the 2026 Games in Italy, bringing home nine medals.
Around the world, the IOC has recognized 85 Olympic Studies and Research Centres, or OSRCs, in 28 countries.
"These centres seek to promote teaching, research, publications and conferences about the Olympic Movement and the Olympic Games with a humanities or social sciences perspective," states the IOC's website.
The United States is underrepresented in this area. The University of Oregon, a track and field powerhouse, established its Olympic Studies Hub in its business school several years ago, while Arizona State University and the United States Sports University in Alabama have more recently established centers. Utah's would be the fourth in the U.S.
Utah is well-positioned to host a dynamic research hub thanks to its past and future as an Olympic host.
"We are, bar none, the global example of legacy within the Olympic movement, and that's because we made a profit in 2002 and we used that surplus to maintain world-class Olympic venues," Gochnour said. "That's not a practice that other host cities have been able to replicate. We've hosted hundreds of world-class sporting events since the 2002 Games at the Utah Olympic Park (ski jumping and aerials, Park City), at the Utah Olympic Oval (speed skating, Kearns), Soldier Hollow (cross country skiing and biathlon, Midway) and Utah ski resorts."
Utah's past success in hosting the Olympics will guide the center's research questions.
"How do you put on a Games that turns a surplus? How do you put on a Games that has infrastructure that endures?" Gochnour posed. "How do you inspire youth in sport, which we've been able to do at these venues?
The next step is to win formal recognition from the International Olympic Committee (IOC), then expand the new center's lines of enquiry once it's up and running by inviting scholars and researchers from across the U campus to join the effort. U entities that have shown interest so far include the Tanner Humanities Center, Huntsman Mental Health Institute and the Marriott Library. External partners include the IOC, the University of Oregon, the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation and Utah 2034.
Along with Lin and Gochnour, the University of Olympic Research Center's board of directors will include Scott Doughman, who handles Olympic Planning & Strategic Initiatives in the Office of the President; Fielding Norton, the Wilkes Center's managing director; and Vice Provost Peter Trapa, who oversees the Colleges of Liberal Arts and Sciences as senior dean. Administrative directors will be Jennifer Robinson, the Gardner Institute's chief of staff, and Cassie Slattery, LAS's director of strategic initiatives.
