Felecia Theune, PhD
Dr. Felecia Theune is a higher education research and strategy professional whose work sits at the intersection of sociology, data analysis, and institutional decision making. She holds a PhD in Sociology and is a Lecturer at the University of Miami, where she teaches research methods and conducts market and workforce research, trend analysis, and program evaluation that guides strategy for graduate online learning.
Her connection to college athletics runs deep. Dr. Theune spent nearly a decade inside the University of Miami Department of Athletics Academic Services, first as an Academic Support Specialist working directly with student-athletes, then as Learning Specialist and Mentor Coordinator overseeing data driven academic programs and student outcomes analysis. Before that, she spent 12 years as a sports journalist, working as a reporter and copy editor. She understands how athletic departments operate, how they are structured, and what pressures their leadership faces, not as an outside observer, but as someone who has worked within them.
Before her career in higher education and athletics, Dr. Theune built a foundation in marketing and strategic communications, developing materials, leading proposals, and helping organizations translate strategy into clear and compelling communications. That practitioner experience shapes how CCS delivers its work: research findings that are analytically rigorous and strategically actionable, presented in a way that resonates with decision makers.
Her sociological foundation shapes how she approaches attendance, not as a marketing problem, but as a behavioral challenge. Attendance is a decision. And like any decision, it can be studied, understood, and influenced when you ask the right questions.
What we believe and where we are headed.
Campus Crowd Strategies translates fan behavior research into practical engagement strategies that build sustainable attendance habits for collegiate athletic programs.
The go-to research and strategy partner for athletic departments building long term attendance culture.
CCS operates alongside, not in competition with, marketing agencies, ticketing platforms, and internal athletics staff.
It started with a conversation and a gap no one was filling.
The idea for Campus Crowd Strategies grew out of a conversation Dr. Theune had with a senior administrator at a Power conference athletic department. The team had a winning record, postseason play was within reach, and yet attendance was soft. The administrator was working through possible explanations, schedule, promotions, timing, trying to piece together an answer from the inside out.
"You haven't asked people why they don't come. You have to do some research. Otherwise, it's just guesswork."
That observation, deceptively simple and surprisingly rare in practice, became the founding premise of CCS. Athletic departments are full of people who understand sports. What they often lack is the research infrastructure to understand their audience. Dr. Theune built Campus Crowd Strategies to fill that gap, bringing the rigor of academic research methods and the analytical tools of behavioral data science to the specific challenge of college sports attendance.
The firm's approach reflects her training as a sociologist. Attendance is not just a numbers problem. It is a social and behavioral one, shaped by awareness, peer norms, access, experience, and habit. CCS is designed to study all of it.
Research backed strategies that build sustainable attendance culture.
Most athletic departments approach attendance through promotion, more posts, more giveaways, more email blasts. Campus Crowd Strategies approaches it through research. The two are not in conflict, but one without the other is working in the dark.
CCS partners with athletic departments to understand who is not coming and why, and to develop evidence based strategies that move programs from reactive event marketing toward the kind of consistent fan engagement that builds attendance culture over time. The result is not just a bigger crowd on game day. It is a program that understands its audience well enough to grow it deliberately.