SUNY Old Westbury names local as new A.D.

When Lenore Walsh was a senior marketing major at Providence College, the Long Island native assumed she would return to the New York area and work at a marketing firm in Manhattan.

That all changed when Walsh, who lives in Franklin Square, was invited to help increase attendance at Providence’s basketball games. Her introduction to college athletics lit a spark that led her to where she is today, as the recently appointed athletic director at SUNY College at Old Westbury.

“It really opened my eyes to the business of college athletics,” Walsh said of her undergraduate experience.

While working with the basketball team at Providence, she and her fellow marketing majors developed “class nights” and various giveaways to attract more students to games, and their efforts worked: Attendance jumped. “It really increased the school spirit,” she said.

After she graduated in 1996, Walsh took a yearlong internship with the Eastern College Athletic Conference in Massachusetts. While working for the ECAC, she got involved in everything from event planning and marketing to conference championships. She gained an appreciation for the business of college athletics, and wanted to learn more.

Having grown up in Stony Brook, she wanted to return to Long Island, so when a graduate assistant’s position opened up at Dowling College in Oakdale, Walsh jumped at the chance. During her two years as a graduate student in business, she continued to learn the ins and outs of collegiate athletics, and came to understand the importance of fundraising for colleges and universities.

After earning her MBA, Walsh took a job as an assistant athletic director at the New York Institute of Technology. During her 13 years there, she became an instrumental member of the Bears’ athletic department, overseeing 11 NCAA Division II teams as well as the school’s Division I baseball team. She implemented the Bear Education Athletic Retention program, or BEAR, an academic support program for student athletes. The program offered academic assistance to student athletes in need, and helped improve NYIT’s retention and graduation rates.