AD Candidates Include Alum, Ivy Associate Directors

A Low Library committee searching for Athletic Director John Reeves' replacement has interviewed at least nine candidates, Spectator has learned, and is wrapping up the interview phase of the hiring process.

Three of the nine are Penn Associate Athletic Director Mary DiStanislao, Yale Associate Athletic Director Barbara Chesler, and Ramapo College Athletic Director Eugene Marshall, a source in Columbia's athletic department said. Spectator also confirmed yesterday that former Columbia women's tennis coach Howard Endelman, CC '87, is a candidate and has received an interview.

The search committee should name a new athletic director within the next several weeks. However, the committee chair and University President Lee Bollinger has not actually sat in on most of the interviews. Several were conducted while Bollinger was in Asia early this month, and Bollinger has also been preoccupied recently with the graduate student strike. A source familiar with the athletic director search said that several committee members are proceeding cautiously because a distracted Bollinger has veto power over the committee's recommendation.

Initially, members of the athletic department were upset that the search committee did not include any current Columbia athletics employees. In addition to Bollinger, the committee is comprised of three alumni, two senior athletes, one professor, and one administrator. However, athletic department concerns were quelled when Associate Athletic Director and Head Baseball Coach Paul Fernandes was added later to the search committee.

Endelman was twice a first-team All-Ivy doubles tennis player and two-year captain while a student at Columbia, playing on the Lions' 1984 and 1987 Ivy League championship teams. After playing professional tennis for three years, Endelman returned to Columbia, where he served as the women's tennis head coach from 1989 to 1992. Endelman left to attend law school at Boston College, and worked at a law firm after earning his degree. He is now a vice president at Merrill Lynch in investment banking.

DiStanislao has been an associate athletic director at Penn since 1999. She started her athletic career at Northwestern in 1976, when she became the school's women's basketball head coach at age 23. DiStanislao won two Big 10 titles in four years with the Wildcats and moved to become head coach at Notre Dame for seven seasons. She later earned an MBA at Northwestern and was the associate director of the MBA career management program at Penn's Wharton Business School before moving back into the athletics world. DiStanislao is the Ivy League representative on the NCAA Division I and I-AA Football Issues Committee. A Rutgers alumna, DiStanislao also has coached Penn's women's rugby club team.

Marshall, a Northeastern University alumnus, has been athletic director and women's basketball coach at Ramapo for six years. He has compiled a 117-86 record during his tenure at the Division III school in New Jersey. Previously, Marshall had served as the athletic director and women's basketball coach at the College of Staten Island.

Chesler has been at Yale since 1985, previously serving as assistant athletic director at Manhattanville College in Purchase, N.Y. She was the inaugural chair of the NCAA Women's Rowing Committee and has been involved with several construction projects for Yale athletics.

At this point, no front-runner has surfaced for the position. Bollinger made two athletic director hires at Michigan, both of whom were Michigan alumni and had considerable experience in the private sector. The first was Tom Goss, who turned out to be a disaster.

Goss, a former Michigan football player, was constantly under fire as he ran up suspicious departmental budget deficits, failed to inform Bollinger of an NCAA investigation into basketball player Jamal Crawford, and dealt with the scandal involving booster Ed Martin allegedly giving players payoffs. Goss lasted just 28 months on the job. He was replaced by Bill Martin, a Michigan business school alum; he created a real estate construction company and also was an avid sailor who served as president of the U.S. Sailing Association and as a board member for the United States Olympic Committee.

Columbia's new athletic director will officially take over on July 1. Earlier fears that the committee was not moving fast enough to meet the deadline have dissipated.

--Jason Elliott contributed to this report.