GRAND FORKS, N.D. — Brian Faison, who served as athletic director at two NCAA Division I schools, has been tabbed to lead the University of North Dakota athletics program in its jump from Division II.
UND named Faison, a special assistant to the president at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, as its new athletic director on Thursday.
Phil Harmeson, a UND vice president, said Faison was to be formally introduced at a news conference Friday morning. Faison also was to attend the annual spring practice football game on Saturday and meet with the public.
Faison will take over on May 1, UND spokesman Jayson Hajdu said.
Faison was the athletic director at New Mexico State from 1999 through 2004 and the AD at Indiana State from 1988 through 1995.
He and Tim Hickman, associate athletic director at the University of Missouri, were the finalists to succeed Tom Buning, who resigned as UND's athletic director last November.
"Brian will have an outstanding opportunity to take a superb athletic and academic tradition forward, and to be an agent of change as we move our entire program into Division I,'' UND President Charles Kupchella said in a statement. "Given Brian's outstanding background in athletic administration, we believe our program is in excellent hands.''
Faison said he's excited about the job.
"All of our efforts will be focused upon successfully managing the transition of our sports to Division I classification, while maintaining the academic and athletic excellence the UND family has come to expect,'' he said.
UND's men's and women's hockey programs compete in Division I, but all other sports are Division II.
About a year ago, the university formally applied to move all of its programs to Division I. An exploratory year began last fall. UND teams will begin competing against Division I teams in the 2008-2009 school year and will become fully Division I in 2012-2013.
Faison, who has more than 30 years of experience in athletic administration, also has been an assistant AD at Louisville and Illinois State, two other Division I schools.
Faison will become UND's 15th full-time, permanent athletic director.
Athletic department staff members Betty Ralston and Steve Brekke have been co-acting athletic directors since Buning's departure.
Buning, who was hired at UND in June 2005, resigned last fall about two months after he was presented with results of an anonymous survey of coaches and staff that criticized his performance. He later said he did not quit because of the survey but because it had become clear to him he and UND were going in separate directions.
Buning said in an earlier letter to Harmeson that he and his staff were overworked and did not have enough money to make a proper transition to Division I. He also objected to reporting to Harmeson instead of Kupchella as he had done before an organizational change last summer.
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