Associate Dean of B. School Named Athletic Director

Robert L. Scalise was named Monday as Harvard’s seventh Nichols Family Director of Athletics. Scalise, who will begin in the job on Aug. 1, currently serves as associate dean for administration and senior executive office at Harvard Business School (HBS).

The announcement was the culmination of a six-month nationwide search to replace William J. Cleary ’56, who announced last December that he would retire at the end of June after 11 years in the position.

The announcement was made Monday at a noontime press conference at the Murr Center attended by a number of top University and College administrators, including President Lawrence H. Summers—who officially made the appointment—Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles and Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68. Many from the athletic department, including Cleary and dozens of coaches, also attended the announcement.

“I’m honored to be chosen,” Scalise said during Monday’s press conference. “As a former Ivy League player and coach this is a dream come true.”

Scalise is no stranger to Harvard athletics. He previously served as the coach to both the men’s lacrosse and women’s soccer teams.

“This is a homecoming for our new director,” Knowles said in introducing Scalise at the press conference.

From 1974 to 1987, when Scalise coached the team, men’s lacrosse amassed a combined 98-79 record. He led Harvard to its first NCAA tournament appearance—and an Ivy League championship—in 1980.

He served as the first coach of Harvard’s women’s soccer team, heading up the team from 1977 to 1986. He agreed to help start a women’s soccer program at Harvard in 1976 after being approached by several interested players.

In his ten years as head coach, his women’s soccer teams had a combined By DANIEL P. MOSTELLER

Crimson Staff Writer

Robert L. Scalise was named Monday as Harvard’s seventh Nichols Family Director of Athletics. Scalise, who will begin in the job on Aug. 1, currently serves as associate dean for administration and senior executive office at Harvard Business School (HBS).

The announcement was the culmination of a six-month nationwide search to replace William J. Cleary ’56, who announced last December that he would retire at the end of June after 11 years in the position.

The announcement was made Monday at a noontime press conference at the Murr Center attended by a number of top University and College administrators, including President Lawrence H. Summers—who officially made the appointment—Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles and Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68. Many from the athletic department, including Cleary and dozens of coaches, also attended the announcement.

“I’m honored to be chosen,” Scalise said during Monday’s press conference. “As a former Ivy League player and coach this is a dream come true.”

Scalise is no stranger to Harvard athletics. He previously served as the coach to both the men’s lacrosse and women’s soccer teams.

“This is a homecoming for our new director,” Knowles said in introducing Scalise at the press conference.

From 1974 to 1987, when Scalise coached the team, men’s lacrosse amassed a combined 98-79 record. He led Harvard to its first NCAA tournament appearance—and an Ivy League championship—in 1980.

He served as the first coach of Harvard’s women’s soccer team, heading up the team from 1977 to 1986. He agreed to help start a women’s soccer program at Harvard in 1976 after being approached by several interested players.

In his ten years as head coach, his women’s soccer teams had a combined record of 113-38-11 and won three Ivy League championships. Scalise was the nation’s first collegiate women’s soccer coach to record 100 victories—a mark he reached in 1985.

While a search committee, headed by Harvard Alumni Association Executive Director and former Harvard Athletics Director Jack P. Reardon ’60, conducted interviews and screened candidates, Summers had the ultimate responsibility of making the appointment.

Reardon said that in the end the committee gave Summers the names of four candidates and that Summers had individual discussions with all four.

Over the six-month search, the committee interviewed 15 candidates for the position, according to a statement released by the athletic department on Monday.

“We went through a rather lengthy process,” Reardon said. The committee had two formal meetings with the coaching and administrative staff of the athletics department, who were not directly represented on the committee.

They also invited these staff members to personally interview the final candidates for the position and provide feedback to the search committee.

Reardon said that Scalise was hesitant to consider leaving his position at HBS, and thus was not an active candidate under consideration for most of the search, even though Reardon said that from the beginning he felt Scalise would be a very good candidate. Reardon said he had known Scalise since interviewing him in 1974 for the lacrosse coaching position.

However, Reardon said that he was able to convince Scalise to reconsider this decision during the final weeks of the search.

He said that the committee quickly shifted its attention to Scalise after Mark Murphy, the current athletics director at Colgate University, withdrew his name from consideration in the final stages of the search process.

At Monday’s announcement ceremony, Summers praised Scalise’s efforts to begin the women’s soccer programs and said that it showed his commitment to broadening the range of students who participate in the College’s athletic program—a commitment that Summers said he was looking for in a new athletic director.

Summers said that he also had sought an athletic director who would be a skilled manager of the department—a quality that Scalise had demonstrated as a dean at HBS.

“I’m thrilled that Bob Scalise agreed to assume the leadership of Harvard’s athletic program,” Summers said.

Scalise, who earned a masters degree from HBS in 1989, has worked in his current position, where he had oversight of the school’s $200 million budget, since 1996.

Scalise has also been a participant in Ivy League athletics. A 1971 graduate of Brown University, Scalise was a member of the school’s lacrosse team. He received All-American and All-Ivy honors in both 1970 and 1971.

Scalise still holds the record at Brown for the most number of goals scored in a game—he scored 11 in a 1971 game. He was inducted into the New England Lacrosse Chapter Hall of Fame in 1998 for his career as a player at Brown.

Scalise is married to Maura Coston Scalise ’80, who was an All-Ivy swimmer while an undergraduate and served as coach for Harvard’s women’s swimming and diving team from 1984 to 1997. They live in Nahant and have four children.

—Staff writer Daniel P. Mosteller can be reached at dmostell@fas.harvard.edu.