GCU names 1st female athletics director

By Lindsay Walker
Twitter: @AzNewsmedia

After serving as the interim vice president of athletics for Grand Canyon University for the past two years, Jamie Boggs is taking the reins on a more permanent basis.

GCU announced Ms. Boggs as its new athletics director at a live press conference on Monday. She said she accepted the official position to oversee the university’s 21 sports teams just one week ago, becoming the first woman and first woman of color to have the job. She previously spent time in the compliance department of Duke University — a perfect fit for her law degree — and the athletics department at Georgia State University.

“In her time as interim athletic director, Jamie has done an outstanding job,” GCU President Brian Mueller said in a prepared statement. “Our programs and athletes have flourished athletically, academically and spiritually. Most importantly she has integrated the athletic department into the culture and purpose of the institution. Her promotion to vice president of athletics has been earned by her performance, and we are grateful for her accepting this position.”

While much of Ms. Bogg’s interim tenure, which began in August 2019, has been marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 was a banner year for GCU’s athletics department. It culminated in the men’s basketball team’s first appearance in the National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament, though the Lopes were eliminated in the first round. She also hired three new head coaches and helped lay the groundwork for the university’s Division I status, to name a few achievements.

For Ms. Boggs, the daughter of Thai immigrants and a Phoenix native who grew up just three miles from GCU’s Maryvale campus, returning to her hometown is an honor, as is seeing GCU’s work in the community from its weekly food box distribution to its time as a Maricopa County vaccine distribution site.

“It’s an honor and a privilege to be able to serve a university in my hometown,” she said. “I think Phoenix is one of the greatest cities in the country. To see a place like GCU serve the surrounding community and people that were basically like my parents, It makes it even more exciting for me. It gives me more pride in everything that we’re doing.”

Calling the university a “transformational” place and likening it to Disneyland for its friendly community feel, Ms. Boggs said her goal as athletics director is to shine a positive light on the university through its most public-facing department. Throughout her time leading GCU Athletics, Ms. Boggs has emphasized four culture-defining Cs to better align athletics with the university: community, continuous improvement, collaboration and Christian Leadership. She’d like to add a fifth: championships.

“Our goal is to consistently win conference candidate championships and also be consistently competitive for national championships,” she said. “One of our focuses is going to continue to be the mental health of our student athletes across campuses across the country, which continues to be a growing need. We want to continue to grow that support, as well as mental performance support for our student athletes. We want to get as much positive recognition to represent the university as we can.”

Ms. Boggs recognizes the importance of her glass ceiling-breaking appointment as well. Women accounted for about 14% of Division I athletic directors during the 2019-20 athletic season and she is just the fourth Asian American athletic director among approximately 351 Division I programs.

“When I was growing up, my parents always had high expectations for me, so I had high expectations for myself,” she said. “So I never really thought of myself as a female leader or underrepresented leader. But as I went through my career, many people, women and underrepresented groups reached out to me and it made me realize how important it is for them to see an example of someone like them in leadership roles.

“But it’s also important for me to be an example to organizations and institutions and universities who maybe don’t have that same type of support for the advancement of women and people of color like GCU does, and that it is normal, and it brings a lot of benefits to have people from diverse backgrounds.”