Yale will announce its new director of athletics on Thursday at 1 p.m. in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, according to Associate Athletics Director and Director of Sports Publicity Steve Conn.
The New Haven Register has reported that the University will name Vicky Chun, who currently serves at the director of athletics at Colgate, to the position, citing unnamed sources. The News could not independently confirm the report Wednesday night. Conn and Colgate Director of Athletic Communications John Painter said they did not know who would be named Yale’s next athletic director. And members of the Athletic Director Search Committee did not return requests for comment.
If appointed on Thursday, Chun would be the first woman to serve as Yale’s athletic director and would replace Tom Beckett, who will retire in June. Beckett announced in August that he would retire after serving as Yale’s athletic director for 23 years.
Chun is a 1991 graduate of Colgate, where she captained and starred for the Raiders’ volleyball team, earning Patriot League Player of the Year honors her senior season. She was appointed Colgate’s athletic director in 2013.
Chun has overseen success both on the field and in the classroom at Colgate. Under her stewardship, Colgate has won two football and men’s soccer titles, along with championships in women’s soccer, men’s lacrosse, women’s rowing and volleyball. Accompanying these competitive successes, in 2016, the Raiders’ student athletes had a higher average GPA than the overall student body.
Under Chun’s leadership, Colgate hired football coach Dan Hunt and began several development projects such as the Class of 1965 Arena for hockey and the Beyer-Small ’76 Field for soccer. Chun also oversaw a 200 percent increase in giving to athletic support groups.
Chun serves in a variety of roles outside her position at Colgate. She is one of 40 members of the NCAA Division I Council and also serves as vice chair of the Division I Football Oversight Committee.
After Beckett announced his retirement in August, University President Peter Salovey announced that Yale would embark on a nationwide search to find Beckett’s replacement and tapped Dean of Yale College Marvin Chun to lead a 12-member search committee. The committee was assisted by Gregory Santore of the search firm Witt/Kieffer Inc.
The Yale community got an opportunity to participate in the search committee in mid-November, when the Yale College Council, the Yale Student-Athlete College Council and members of the search committee hosted a town hall meeting on the search. Students emphasized that they wanted an athletic director who, like Beckett, would be accessible and present both on and off the field.
Columbia was the last Ivy League school to hire a new athletic director, selecting Peter Pilling in 2015. Pilling had previously served as the senior associate athletic director at Brigham Young University and the associate athletic director at Villanova.
Caleb Rhodes | caleb.rhodes@yale.edu