Columbia Athletic Director M. Dianne Murphy to resign after 2014-15 season

A year after both Penn and Princeton replaced their longtime athletic directors, another Ivy League school is about to begin the search for its next AD.

In an email to the school’s student body , Columbia President Lee Bollinger announced that M. Dianne Murphy, the school’s athletic director for the last decade, will resign from her position at the end of the 2014-15 academic year. Bollinger’s announcement said that Columbia will have time to form a search committee to find her successor.

Last year, Princeton AD Gary Walters announced his retirement in September and was soon followed by Penn AD Steve Bilsky announcing his own retirement in November. Grace Calhoun was named Penn’s new AD in March 2014 before Princeton gave its AD position to Mollie Marcoux in April.

In his email, Bollinger was highly complimentary of Murphy’s time at Columbia, saying that she had “led the transformation of our athletics program and overseen an unprecedented record of success in the modern history of Columbia Athletics.” The Lions won five Ivy League titles during the last academic year, something only done once before in Columbia history — the 2006-07 season, when Murphy was also the AD.

Columbia won 26 Ivy League team titles over the course of the last decade, which ranks sixth in the Ancient Eight behind, in order, Princeton, Harvard, Cornell, Penn and Yale. Penn has won 31 titles in the same span.

Bilsky also praised Murphy in a statement after her announcement.

“Dianne has been an outstanding administrator, and an even better friend and colleague,” he said. “What she has done at Columbia is unprecedented. She’s a constant voice for all that is right in Ivy athletics.”

However, Murphy’s tenure as athletic director has been met with some harsh criticism from those surrounding it. In November 2013, the Columbia Spectator published an editorial titled “Fire M. Dianne Murphy” that advocated for Bollinger to “bring in new leadership to the department.”

The Spectator’s editorial board detailed her unsuccessful hirings of two football coaches — Norries Wilson and current coach Pete Mangurian — while also criticizing the lack of improvements to on-campus resources for students taking physical education (Columbia students are required to take physical education courses within the curriculum).

The editorial also focused on a hazing scandal with the field hockey team and the controversy surrounding the football program following the discovery of racist and homophobic tweets sent by players in May 2013 .

Bollinger responded to the editorial with a letter to the editor defending Murphy, citing the success of Columbia’s programs relative to the past. Bollinger wrote that he understood frustrations with the state of physical education facilities but argued that Columbia athletics had “made enormous progress in the athletic department.”

Murphy came to Columbia from Denver, where she also served as the athletic director, moving the Pioneers from Division II to Division I within the NCAA. While she had served in many previous positions within athletic departments — including as an associate AD at Cornell — she also spent 13 years as a women’s basketball coach, spending time at Shorter College, Florida State and Eastern Kentucky.

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