Dartblog

Parker Executive Search in Atlanta has just posted the hiring criteria for Dartmouth’s next AD. The intro:

The Director of Athletics and Recreation provides dynamic, strategic and visionary leadership to the Department of Athletics and Recreation while overseeing the overall management and administration of varsity sports, club sports, physical education, recreation, fitness, intramurals, and related facilities. The Director is also responsible for assembling, supervising, mentoring, evaluating and leading a well trained, highly qualified staff to enable all segments of the Department to function effectively. The Director is assisted by several core staff members and oversees the work of over 60 coaches and physical education instructors. The Director is responsible, in consultation with appropriate College administrators, for the formulation and implementation of all athletic/recreational policies, procedures, and programs. The Director advises the Dean of the College on issues and concerns regarding all aspects of intercollegiate athletics including College, Ivy League, Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC), and National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules and regulations.

Do you think that you could offer the same dynamic, strategic and visionary leadership that Josie Harper and Bob Ceplikas have given the College’s athletics program over the past decade — or are you the type of person who wants to turn around a struggling program whose valid components are crying out for an experienced leader?

Note: The hiring sheet lists the College’s athletics budget at $18.5 million — which constitutes a big chunk of the College’s overall budget in 2009 of $735.0 million, don’t you think? For non-math majors, this figure is just 2.5% of the total budget, or to put it another way, any time that Dartmouth drops a sawbuck, a measly twenty-five cents of it goes to supporting our student athletes.

The 2011 budget for the undergraduate College is $507 million — which would put athletics spending at 3.65% of all expenditures. An attentive reader has advanced the (as yet unconfirmed) proposition that average academic spending on athletics is usually 6% of the total undergrad budget.