Robert Malekoff Named to UNC-Chapel Hill Athletics Panel
Robert Malekoff
Faculty member Robert Malekoff has been named to a panel that will examine the balance of athletics and academics at UNC-Chapel Hill following two years of athletics-related scandals.
Members of the committee were announced by the university’s outgoing chancellor, Holden Thorp, at a recent meeting with university faculty members upset at the toll the scandals have taken on the institution’s reputation, according to a story in the Raleigh News & Observer.
Former N.C. Supreme Court Justice Patricia Timmons-Goodson, a member of Guilford’s Board of Trustees, also is a member of the panel.
Bob, associate professor and chair of the Department of Sport Studies, has worked with colleges and universities nationwide to keep academics, athletics and student life in harmony. He was quoted in a March 13 story in the Greensboro News & Record about the role of athletics in higher education.
“I fully believe if you gave most Division I presidents a truth serum, they would say if there was a way to turn back the clock and get athletics under control, they’d do it in a heartbeat,” he told the newspaper. “But they can’t. They’re powerless. They really are powerless.”
Bob served as a men’s lacrosse and women’s soccer coach at Princeton University before embarking on a career in sports administration. He was director of research and national consortium coordinator at Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society, where he also co-authored the book On the Mark: Putting the Student back in Student-Athlete.
He was an associate director of athletics at Harvard University and director of athletics at Connecticut College and The College of Wooster, and has served on numerous national sport committees including the NCAA Division III Management Council. He has written, spoken and consulted extensively on the role of sport in higher education, and was instrumental in the formation of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s College Sports Project.
The panel will hold its first meeting April 19 and be led by Association of American Universities President Hunter Rawlings. Other members are Jim Delany, commissioner of the Big Ten athletic conference, and Amy Perko, executive director of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.
Holden plans to leave Chapel Hill after this semester to become provost at Washington University in St. Louis. In a column published by Inside Higher Ed Sept. 19, soon after Holden announced his departure, Bob wrote that university trustees as well as presidents are responsible for reining in athletics programs.
