Rebel with a cause: Discover UNLV
Living in dorm, AD gets to know staff, students
If there were a handbook for new college athletics directors, talking about how they want to become part of the campus community would be cover sheet material. But for UNLV’s Desiree Reed-Francois, it isn’t just a cliché. She has been doing it every day since starting the job June 1, living in Tonopah North dormitory on campus rather than a hotel or apartment before she moves into a permanent residence with her husband and teenage son in mid-July.
“It’s been really interesting to get to know our students, and when I met with a couple of recruits and their guardians, I was able to speak firsthand about what it’s like to live in a dorm,” Reed-Francois told USA TODAY Sports. “When I first set out to do this, I wanted to be a part of campus and get to know our studentathletes and get to know my campus colleagues, so what better way to do that than live in a dorm? It’s been a great experience.”
For Reed-Francois, moving back into a dormitory for the first time since she was a freshman at UCLA has largely been about convenience over comfort. Spending six weeks in a 10-by-20foot room with gray cinder block walls, a foam mattress and a mini-fridge isn’t something a 45year-old administrator who just signed a $350,000 annual contract would typically want to do.
But it also speaks to how seriously Reed-Francois is taking her first few months on the job, putting in 16-hour days and trying to meet individually with all 246 staff members she inherited to assess how UNLV’s beleaguered athletics department can improve.
“I’ve had to get used to coin- operated laundry machines again, but it’s been great to be part of campus,” she said. “The opportunity to have a five-minute commute and walk to my office has been invaluable, and I wanted to send a message that our athletic department is going to be humble and work really hard and we’re a part of this vibrant campus.”
Reed-Francois, who said she’s paying the $30-per-day dorm fee, has made a career of adapting to new surroundings. She was a lawyer before getting back into college athletics, working at several schools on the West Coast before moving cross-country to Tennessee, where she oversaw the men’s basketball program. Athletics director Whit Babcock hired her at Cincinnati to be the top administrator for football, then brought her to Virginia Tech, where she was his top deputy.
That experience led to ReedFrancois becoming the first Hispanic woman to get an athletics director job in the Football Bowl Subdivision and the first woman to replace a woman (Tina Kunzer-Murphy was UNLV’s athletics director from July 2013 until this spring).
“There are so many talented women in this industry, and we have to continue to be open to new experiences and you have to be willing to make some moves,” she said. “I feel a responsibility and I know that I need to do as good of a job as I possibly can so I can make sure and keep that pipeline of talented women com- ing through.”
The job Reed-Francois has landed, however, is not an easy one. UNLV athletics was projected to face a nearly $5 million budget deficit at the end of this fiscal year until the university and Thomas & Mack Center stepped in to contribute $3.7 million, essentially giving her a clean slate financially.
Still, with the Rebels basketball program struggling in recent years and its football team trying to make incremental improvement under Tony Sanchez, a key part of the job will be trying to find ways to grow revenue.
In February, UNLV submitted a budget to the state board of regents showing $31.6 million in revenue for the 2016 fiscal year, roughly $12.5 million of which was from state funding, student fees or institutional support.
Reed-Francois said her top priority over the first month has been learning about the department so she can assess the infrastructure needed to extract UNLV’s tantalizing potential.
“The job of any leader is to create an environment for our student-athletes to be successful, and one way to do that is analyze our resources,” Reed-Francois said. “I’ve been spending time getting to know our budget and figuring out where there’s opportunity for growth. While I can’t outspend some of my colleague institutions, our winning edge is going to be our people, and Las Vegas is a dynamic place. It seems unlike any other college town I’ve lived in. There’s plenty of entertainment options, but there’s only one university here in Las Vegas with Division I sports, and my goal is to build on the history we have here and make sure Las Vegas and the Rebels are synonymous.”