Five months after Cheryl Levick announced her resignation as athletic director, Saint Louis University still has not found a permanent replacement for her position.
A five-person search committee, chaired by Business School Dean Ellen Harshman, is accepting applications for the position. Meanwhile, Senior Associate Athletics Director Doug McIlhagga is filling the position as an interim.
Bryan Burwell, a sports columnist who covers Billiken sports for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, said he is not surprised that the search has taken so long.
“It might be difficult to find someone who isn’t worried about being micromanaged by the president of the University,” Burwell said, referring to the circumstances that led to Levick’s resignation. Levick left shortly after University President Father Lawrence Biondi overruled her and fired men’s basketball coach Brad Soderberg.
McIlhagga said that some people will be swayed by the events of last spring, but he does not believe that those circumstances will prevent SLU from attracting excellent candidates.
“They know our department has potential, especially with the new coach,” McIlhagga said.
SLU has opted not to use an executive search firm to assist in the process. Schools such as as Brown, Cornell, Northern Illinois, Michigan, Kentucky and Ohio State have recently employed executive search firms to help fill athletic director vacancies. SLU, however, “doesn’t use search firms for major positions; they typically do their own here,” Harshman said.
McIlhagga said the University is looking for “someone with experience at the D-1 level who has external skills, especially in fundraising and corporate sponsorship.”
Harshman also emphasized the need to find a candidate with a demonstrated ability to raise funds. This focus is a natural outgrowth of the school’s investment in its new $80.5 million basketball arena and new men’s basketball coach Rick Majerus.
Burwell said SLU is looking for a candidate with “good people skills, because they will have to be able do work with Rick Majerus, alumni and Father Biondi.”
He believes the new athletic director’s biggest challenge will be “trying to figure out the mind of the President.”
“The President has done a good job with the University,” Burwell said. “But with the athletic department, he has overstepped his bounds on a few occasions.”
Harshman also said that the final decision on the next athletic director will be made by University Provost Joe Weixlmann, who will consider the recommendation made by the search committee.
Both Harshman and McIlhagga hope a new athletic director is named in the near future, but neither would offer a date by which they thought the process would conclude.
“The real question is the fit,” Harshman said. “Is this the right person at the right time? It is our job to narrow the group down to find that person.”
