T-shirt Hunt Leads to Award-Winning Business
Alumni Mike and Tanya Ickowitz maintain their Vol connection through their award-winning Patdome Promotions.
UT alumni Mike and Tanya Ickowitz earned recognition in the 2025 Rocky Top Business Awards for their Knoxville-based company Patdome Promotions. Their entrepreneurial success began almost 20 years ago because they couldn’t buy a t-shirt.
In 2006, the Patriots basketball team at George Mason University in Virginia, where Mike earned his communications bachelor’s degree, played in the Final Four tournament. He wanted to support his alma mater, but he found it impossible to purchase a shirt from his home in Knoxville, where he worked as associate director of the UT Graduate and International Admissions office.
They set about establishing Patdome to help themselves and fellow fans outside of the immediate Washington, DC, area acquire officially licensed team apparel, picking a name for their company that befit their mission.
“The Patriots played at the time in the Patriot Center, affectionately referred to as the ‘Pat Dome,’” said Ickowitz.
Almost 20 years later, Patdome now collaborates with businesses and organizations throughout the US and beyond to create complex marketing campaigns with branded promotional products and logo items—including UT.
“Chances are excellent that someone reading this has had a Patdome product in their hands,” said Ickowitz. “We are incredibly proud to help the university welcome, enhance, and celebrate the Volunteer Nation and spirit.”
Professional Lessons Learned
Ickowitz immersed in the Volunteer Spirit while on staff in UT’s graduate and international admissions office from 2003 to 2010. As part of a career development plan, he earned his first master’s degree in college student personnel (CSP). Concepts he learned in CSP improved the ways he could help the students that he worked with and gave him insight for the blossoming Patdome company.
“Richard Bayer, the Dean of Enrollment Services at the time, taught me to invest in people, to lead and work by listening and understanding,” said Ickowitz. “My advisor, the late Grady Bogue, taught me that working with large enterprises is much like working on a cruise ship: They do not turn quickly, and it takes teams of people working together to be successful. His larger lesson was to understand the organization, your part of it, the vision, and the importance of the planned journey to get there.”
As his career path evolved, Ickowitz went to work growing science education programs with a Department of Energy contractor in Oak Ridge. This role inspired him to further his education even more, so he returned to UT to earn his sociology master’s degree.
“I needed to be able to answer the question of why investing in future scientists as a long-term national strategy was important and in what ways,” said Ickowitz. “I found the answer in studying a 20th century Austrian economist named Joseph Schumpeter and his work on ‘creative destruction.’”
This is a concept that most change isn’t instant but rather comes about through small changes and adjustments to replace earlier versions.
“It makes me hyper-aware that marketing, product design, and supply chains are always in a state of interwoven small changes,” said Ickowitz. “Anticipating this change and recognizing and searching for the forefront of ideas and solutions are critical to competitiveness.”
Maintaining the Volunteer Connection
Mike and Tanya Ickowitz support the university through donations as a way to express their ongoing gratitude and to stay connected to Rocky Top.
“Above all, we want to invest in the future experiences, innovations, and in all of the potential ways that UT will inevitably change the world,” said Ickowitz. “I am genuinely humbled and honored to be connected to UT and to be recognized for our growth as an alumnus-owned business. The Volunteer Spirit is as strong as it is in large part because of the countless professionals working to make the experience of students and alumni second-to-none.”
By Randall Brown