Tennessee Tech has retained the services of a consulting firm to assist in the search for an athletic director.
Mark Wilson resigned in April. Tennessee Tech President Phil Oldham said since the university last went through the process to find an Athletic Director 20 years ago, college athletics has drastically changed.
“They handle the applications, they provide some vetting of those applicants,” Oldham said. “By using a firm like this, it speeds the process up significantly for us and gets us to a short list of candidates pretty quickly.”
Oldham said the university is on a tight time frame, as the university’s goal is to hire a new athletic director within the next six to eight weeks.
Oldham said collegiate athletics is now more of a business enterprise and that the university is looking for an athletic director who will approach it that way.
“We are looking for an athletic director with some skillset in the area of business development around athletics and how to not only raise the profile for Tennessee Tech Athletics, but to generate the revenue necessary to support national competitiveness in all of our athletic programs,” Oldham said.
Oldham also said the university is looking for an athletic director who can increase attendance at all sporting events and improve upon community development on and off campus. Oldham said he believes the athletic director position at Tennessee Tech will be highly sought after.
“I think Tennessee Tech’s well-positioned to make a big statement on the national scene and college athletics,” Oldham said. “D1 athletic director positions don’t open up that frequently, so I expect there to be a lot of energy and a lot of interest around this opening.
Oldham said the firm has reached out to different constituents, including senior staff and students, to get input before starting the search. Oldham said the university is holding off on who will be involved in the interviewing process. Oldham said the university has retained the services of Collegiate Sports Associates to assist with the search process
