Bates Introduced As New Athletic Director

“I was fortunate enough to hire people a lot smarter and more talented than me, and they made me look really good,” Bates said. “Beyond that, the one variable that I would look at is that we certainly grew facilities, we had competitive success, we moved the needle in terms of championships in some of the most fiscal sports, as well as a lot of the Olympic sports. We set a school record for championships a couple of years ago.

“All those things are great. They’re all grounded in maximizing student development. The true measure for us, in a lot of ways, is how your students—what the quality of the experience they’re having at the institution. We were able to significantly elevate our graduation rates there in our time.”

Bates’ main emphasis during his press conference was how excited he was to start interacting with BC’s student athletes, and how he hoped to maximize their development during their time in Chestnut Hill.

“Our overarching goal is to maximize student development,” Bates said. “The way you do that in intercollegiate athletics is you graduate your students and you have competitive success. At the forefront of everything that we’re going to focus on will be the policy question, ‘How does this help our students grow? How does this maximize student development?’

“Essentially, what we are doing is taking this athletic curriculum and these athletic classrooms, and sure we’re developing better athletes to be competitive and win championships, but if that’s all we’re doing, we’re falling far short of the power of a Boston College student athlete experience.”