Mark Richard is entering his 10th year as the Director of Athletics at the University of Montevallo.
Richard was named the eighth full-time Director of Athletics at the University on June 12, 2014.
Richard, who has over 30 years of collegiate sports administration experience, arrived at Montevallo after serving five years as the Director of Athletics at Gannon University, an NCAA Division II institution in Erie, Pennsylvania.
The Meadville, Pennsylvania, native and former Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) student-athlete came to Gannon after spending 10 years at Auburn University, including the final four years as the Senior Associate Director of Athletics for Team Support, where he was an integral part of the leadership and strategic planning group at Auburn University.
Richard spent three years at Vanderbilt University as Assistant Director of Athletics for Compliance prior to his tenure at Auburn. Richard has also served as the Director of NCAA Compliance and Student Services and the Coordinator of Game Operations at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), Director of Student-Athlete Services at North Carolina State University and an Operations and Facilities Advisor at the University of Florida during his administrative career.
At Montevallo, Richard guides an athletic department that has increased its student-athlete population by more than 100 percent in the past eight years while continuing to develop a culture for a high level of academic excellence. More than 60 percent of all Montevallo student-athletes have posted a grade point average of 3.0 or higher and the department has posted record semester and cumulative grade point averages while graduating student-athletes at a rate 20 percent higher than the student body at-large.
He leads a department that has embraced the NCAA Division II philosophy of community engagement and has demonstrated a high level of commitment to the campus and surrounding communities, culminating with the department’s transition to the Gulf South Conference in 2017-18.
In his role, Richard oversees a department that finished 4th in GSC All Sports Trophy in 2020-2021 and 2021-2022, and 2022-23, the highest finish ever as a D-II institution and fifth in the GSC All Sports standings in 2017-18.
Richard is in charge of a growing department, which will expand to 23 sports with the addition of Acrobatics and Tumbling in the 2024-25 season.
Gannon excelled under Richard's leadership from 2009-2014 both in the classroom and on the playing field, finishing among the top 20 percent of the nation's NCAA Division II athletics programs in the final 2012-13 NCAA Division II Learfield Sports Directors' Cup Standings. Ten Gannon programs were regionally-ranked at some point with seven being nationally-ranked. Ten Gannon student-athletes were named Capital One Academic All-Americans, representing the highest total in NCAA Division II. Individual academic awards included a PSAC Champion Scholar, three PSAC Top 10 Award winners, 12 Capital One Academic All-District selections and 21 overall Academic All-Americans. The entire student-athlete population also combined to work almost 3,000 hours of community service during the last academic year.
Richard started his Auburn tenure as the Associate Director of Athletics in 1999 and served in that capacity until 2004, when he was promoted to Senior Associate Director of Athletics for Team Support. Richard’s experience and duties at Auburn included compliance, budgets, scheduling, strategic planning, direct supervision of selected sports and drug-testing policies for an institution with approximately 500 student-athletes.
Richard served as the Assistant Director of Athletics for Compliance at Vanderbilt University (1997-99) and the Director of NCAA Compliance and Student Services at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (1995-97), where he implemented a continuing NCAA Compliance Education Program and the CHAMPS program. He began his stay at UNLV as the Coordinator of Game Operations (1993-95), where he also served as the Director of Bowl Game Operations for the Las Vegas Bowl.
Richard began his administrative career as an Operations and Facilities Advisor at the University of Florida (1988-90) before moving to North Carolina State University to become the Director of Student-Athlete Services (1990-93).
Richard graduated from PSAC member Clarion University in 1983 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration. He was a two-sport athlete at Clarion, lettering four times in football (1979-82) and playing one season (1980) for the baseball team. Richard earned his Master’s of Exercise and Sport Sciences with a sports management emphasis from the University of Florida in 1989.
Richard has three daughters, Mackenzie Margaret, Hope Elliott and Nicole Rene.
The University of Montevallo has had eight athletic directors dating back to 1971, when men's basketball head coach Dr. Leon Davis was named the institution's first Director of Athletics.
UNIVERSITY OF MONTEVALLO ATHLETIC DIRECTORS
Dr. Leon Davis (1971-1991)
Rob Spivery (1991-1995)
Bob Riesener (1995-1999)
Roy E. Culberson (1999-2001)
Michael Cancilla (2001-2006)
Dennis Toney (2006-2008)
Jim Herlihy (2008-2014)
Mark Richard (2014-Present)
