East Stroudsburg, Pa. – Dr. Joy Richman, an athletic and academic administrator at Allentown College for the last eight years, has been named athletic director at East Stroudsburg University, it was announced Friday.

Dr. Richman will be the first woman to head the ESU athletic program on a permanent basis in the school’s 107-year history. She succeeds Earl W. Edwards, who resigned in February to accept a similar position at the University of California, San Diego.

The appointment is effective July 3rd, according to Valerie Hodge, Vice President of Student Affairs, which includes athletics, who made the announcement.

Richman will be the senior administrator of an intercollegiate athletic program of 19 sports, ten for women and nine for men, in which more than 450 student-athletes participate. The Warriors compete at the NCAA Division II level and are members of the 14-school Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference.

Among the focus areas of her position will be friend and fund raising, improving the program for the student-athletes and becoming an integral member of the university community, Hodge indicated.

At Allentown, Richman served as Director of Sport Management, Physical Education and Athletics. She also oversaw the campus recreation and intramural program.

Her duties there included strategic planning, human resource management and organization and evaluation of programs, staff and facilities. She also handled student-athlete eligibility, facility and game scheduling, travel arrangements and event management.

Allentown has been a member of the Middle Athletic States Collegiate Athletic Conference (MAC), one of the nation’s oldest Division III conferences, since 1997. During this time, the Centaurs won league titles in women’s basketball and baseball and earned NCAA Division III tournament berths in men's and women's basketball, women's volleyball and baseball. The school's athletic program consists of 15 sports.

From 1993-96, Allentown competed in the Pennsylvania Athletic Conference (PAC), winning the President’s Cup Award as the conference’s top overall sports program all three years. When Richman arrived at Allentown in 1992, the school was an independent Division III institution.

Richman considers one of the highlights of her eight years as athletic director to be the completion of the school's new multi-purpose $8 million athletic facility which was honored in 1998 with a Facility of Merit Award by Athletic Business Magazine.

Two of her coaches at Allentown, women's basketball coach Fred Richter and women's soccer coach and assistant softball coach Dave Yob, and one of her trainers, Jim Oches, are graduates of ESU.

In her academic capacity as head of the undergraduate Sport Management program, Richman was responsible for planning and revising the curriculum, scheduling all class offerings, advising and recruiting students and teaching each semester . She taught more than 15 different classes including Facility Planning and Design, Event Management, Sports Marketing and Promotions, Human Resource Management in Sport and Problems in Intercollegiate Sport.

The Allentown Sport Management program recently became one of only 20 undergraduate programs in the nation to earn accreditation by the Sport Management Program Review Council (SMPRC).

She also administered the Physical Education Basic Activity program and lectured classes in Lifetime Fitness and Wellness.

Richman has served as an officer for many regional and national sports organizations. She is the past president of the Lehigh Valley Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, the chairperson of the ECAC Division III Women’s Basketball Committee and a member of the Board of Directors of the National Association for Girls and Women in Sport Board of Directors and the National Council for the Accreditation of Coaching Education (NCACE).

Over the last eight years, Allentown has been the host school for three NCAA Division II Mideast Regional Cross Country Championships, three NCAA Division III Women’s Basketball Regional Tournament and numerous ECAC and conference tourneys for which Richman served as the tournament director.

In addition to her administrative skills, Richman has experience in fund-raising and marketing as she directed a revitalization of Allentown’s Centaur Booster Club which resulted in increased membership and donor gifts. She also is a member of the Board of Directors of the Great Valley Girls’ Scouts Council Capital Campaign.

A native of Dalton, Ga., Richman is a graduate of the University of Georgia where she competed as a scholarship athlete in basketball and golf. She was captain of the basketball team her senior year and qualified for two AIAW national golf tournaments. Her father, Martin Richman was a football player under legendary coach Bobby Dodds at Georgia Tech.

Richman still is an active golfer and has won numerous tournaments in the Lehigh Valley and the Philadelphia area. She is a member of the Bethlehem Golf League.

Richman graduated from Georgia with a Bachelor’s degree in Health and Physical Education in 1977 and then immediately entered graduate school at Springfield College where she obtained a master’s degree in Teaching and the Administration of Physical Education and Athletics in 1978.

From 1979-81, she was the girls’ head basketball and track and field coach and junior varsity gymnastic coach at Lakeside High School in Atlanta. Ga. She then accepted a position as an assistant professor and coach at Averett College in Danville, Va.. She coached the Averett softball teams from 1981-89, the basketball teams from 1981-84 and the volleyball teams from 1985-89.

From 1989-92, she was a teaching assistant at Ohio State University. She also had responsibilities in athletics and was assistant tournament director in charge of marketing and promotions for the NCAA Women’s Golf Tournament in 1991. She worked for Major League Baseball during the 1990 season as a market research assistant, collecting data relative to promotion, product, spectator demographics and consumer behavior for the Detroit Tigers and Pittsburgh Pirates organizations.

Richman earned a doctoral degree in Sport Management in 1992. She will be an assistant professor at East Stroudsburg.

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