By Staff
Athletic Management, 15.6, October/November 2003, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/am/am1506/wuvanderbilt.htm
In early September Vanderbilt University Chancellor Gordon Gee surprised many by announcing he would be reorganizing the school’s athletic department in order to better integrate intercollegiate sports and student-athletes’ lives into the school’s mission and operations. The announcement left many athletics administrators elsewhere wondering: What will the new structure look like?
Facilities and tickets will be merged with similar functions in the Student Life area, Vanderbilt officials say. The Commodore Club will be overseen by the university’s development office (though donors can still specify a sport for their gifts), and sports information and marketing will become part of the university’s Division of Public Affairs.
“We will be integrating things like academic support and dining more into the mainstream of university activities,” says Vice Chancellor Michael Schoenfeld. “Inevitably there will be services and activities that, by their nature, will be specific to varsity student-athletes. But it is our intention to minimize those without putting our student-athletes at a competitive disadvantage.
“There are no plans to eliminate jobs,” Schoenfeld continues. “Over the next six months, we will be looking at all facets of the operations in athletics with an eye toward creating greater efficiencies, eliminating duplication, and providing opportunities for staff members to take on broader responsibilities.”
As for finances, Schoenfeld says, “We will observe all pertinent University, NCAA, and federal regulations for accounting, both in terms of participation and spending.”
Gee himself acknowledged holes in the plan of execution. “This is a macro-concept,” he told The Tennessean of Nashville, “that now will require the people in the athletic programs and within student life and within the chancellor’s office to sit down and talk.”
He also is implementing an altered fiscal philosophy, what he calls “the modified Ivy model for lack of a better word. We need to come up with a financial model that says our revenue-producing sports need to produce revenue to support themselves, but we do not expect them to support the Olympic sports,” Gee told the newspaper. “The Olympic sports need to be supported through another mechanism through the university’s general support of those programs. Then we don’t get into this tension where everyone is driven to win in order to survive.”