University officials announced early this summer that Bernard uir, a top sports administrator at the University of Notre Dame, would become Georgetown’s 10th director of athletics following a year-long nationwide search.
The appointment makes Muir, 36, the youngest athletic director – and one of two African-Americans – in the Big East conference, which includes 16 Division I universities.
University President John J. DeGioia announced the decision, which fills a position left vacant following the June 2004 retirement of Joe Lang, in a June 9 campus-wide broadcast e-mail. uir took up his new position on July 1.
“Bernard is a dynamic individual who will provide strong leadership to Georgetown’s athletics programs and ensure our ability to recruit and retain first-rate coaches and student-athletes who maintain the university’s tradition of academic and athletic success,” DeGioia said in a press release.
As athletic director, Muir is responsible for the management of all of Georgetown’s varsity intercollegiate teams, intramural programs and over 100 coaches and staff members. Over 650 student-athletes participate on 27 varsity teams at Georgetown.
Muir said in an interview that he wants to ensure that student-athletes have “the best experience possible” at Georgetown, but he does not plan to make any immediate changes.
“First and foremost, I’ve got to get a feel for the place and get through an academic year and really have an understanding of the rhythm of the year,” Muir said. “By doing that, I need to be around our coaches and student-athletes as best as I can, as well as our administrators. That’s first and foremost to me.”
With his experience as an administrator at Notre Dame and as a student-athlete on the men’s varsity basketball team at Brown University, Muir is familiar with the organization and development of athletic programs at elite academic schools.
“This is a guy that understood athletics,” John Heisler, the senior athletic director at Notre Dame, said of Muir in a telephone interview. “He had a great feel for what to do. That’s huge.”
Muir served as deputy director of athletics for administration and facilities at Notre Dame, which, like Georgetown, competes in the Big East for most sports. His duties included managing game operations for the nationally-recognized football team, overseeing all of the non-varsity sports and working with the university architect on facilities.
Muir said that his day-to-day responsibilities over the past few years included supervising projects for athletic facilities.
“It could be from just maintenance of a facility to really looking at a facility master plan and trying to figure out how we go through the system in order to build buildings or improve what we have,” he said.
Muir’s experience in facilities management is an advantage at Georgetown, where the university is undertaking projects such as a proposed boathouse and track and the Multi-Sport Facility, which is nearing the completion of its first phase.
Before he was appointed deputy athletic director at Notre Dame, uir focused on the off-the-field issues of student life as the university’s senior associate athletic director for student welfare and development. He was involved in recruitment, admissions, academics and other areas of campus life, including housing and community service.
Muir also has experience in college sports on the national level. From 1992 to 2000, he worked for the NCAA in several roles, most notably as the director of the Division I men’s basketball championship.
“Coming to Notre Dame from the NCAA, [Muir] had great credibility based on where he’d been,” Heisler said.
A 1990 graduate of Brown, Muir studied organizational behavior and management. He went on to earn a master’s degree in sports administration and facility management from Ohio University.
Muir succeeds Adam Brick (GSB ’86, LAW ’90), who served as Georgetown’s interim athletic director during the 2004-05 school year.
Brick applied for athletic director openings at Duquesne University, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and at San Diego State University, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune, but he was not chosen for either position.
