UNLV academic named to another gaming studies role at UNR

Bo Bernhard, executive director of UNLV’s International Gaming Institute, stands on campus at the Stan Fulton Building. Bernhard is a professor of sociology and hotel management who specializes in gambling.

A top UNLV gambling academic has been named to a chair position at UNR in a move aimed at fostering greater collaboration between the historic collegiate rivals.

UNLV announced today that Bo Bernhard, executive director of the university’s International Gaming Institute, will also serve as the Philip G. Satre Chair in Gaming Studies at UNR. Bernhard, whose role at UNLV will remain unchanged, said the appointment will only further enhance the relationship between the campuses’ gambling studies departments.

“We’ve done a lot of work collaboratively over the past few years and, like anything else, we’ve developed a huge amount of trust as the team from north and south has worked together,” Bernhard said. “I would be hard pressed to find anything else in (Nevada higher education) that has been so openly and actively collaborative.”

Bernhard said the connection between gambling academic programs at UNLV and UNR “stands in contrast to the petty rivalries” that sometimes obstruct north-south relations in Nevada.

As Satre Chair, Bernhard will continue to facilitate the annual Executive Development Program held at Lake Tahoe, as well as the International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking held every three years. Bernhard assumed the reins of both programs a few years ago at the request of the late Bill Eadington, the last Satre Chair.

Bernhard said that bringing the UNLV and UNR gambling studies programs closer together will allow the universities to “maximize resources” and collaborate as they look at holding versions of the executive program overseas, for example.

Plans are also in the works to offer classes at both campuses that used to be held at only one of them, allowing for teams of students from both UNLV and UNR.

Bernhard already knows what to say if students complain about having to work with others many miles away.

“We’ll say, yep, that’s the way teams work in 2016, and in the workplace you’re about to join, you’ll find yourself very often having to work with people in different parts of the world,” he said.

Bernhard’s appointment carries special significance, since it allows him to follow in the footsteps of Eadington, his mentor. Eadington, who helped pioneer the field of gambling studies, created the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at UNR. He also founded the executive program and the gambling and risk-taking conference.

Bernhard, a Las Vegas native and Bonanza High School graduate, began studying gambling while he was a student at Harvard University. A professor who attended one of Bernhard’s soccer games learned there that he was from Las Vegas and suggested that he write his senior thesis on gambling.

As Bernhard followed that advice, he learned about Eadington and began a professional relationship with him. Over the years, Eadington became a “mentor, father figure, professionally speaking,” Bernhard said.

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