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WARDE MANUEL Athletic Director ub-athleticdirector@buffalo.edu

Now into his third year as University at Buffalo Director of Athletics, Warde Manuel has begun to unfold his blueprint of building a highly-competitive Division I-A athletic program to match UB’s outstanding academic reputation.

Since Manuel’s arrival on campus in August 2005, the athletic department has accomplished some impressive and historic achievements under his leadership:

• Showcasing Manuel's increased focus on academics since arriving on campus - including the creation of a new study center, quadrupling the investment in tutorial support and doubling the number of computers available to student-athletes - in fall of 2007 UB achieved the highest average cumulative GPA since 2004 and the second highest since joining the MAC. In addition, the football team posted its best GPA in the fall of '07, the highest in its Division I-A history.

• The 2007 Bulls' football program had its best year since moving up to the Division I-A level and joining the Mid-American Conference in 1999, winning five league games and gaining a share of the Mid-American Conference East Division title for the first time in school history.

• In the fall of 2007, the Athletics Department was recognized by the NCAA Division I-A Athlteic Directors as a Program of Excellence, the only school in the nation to receive that designation for 2006-07.

• In June of 2007, Manuel was presented the Opportunity Award by all-time tennis great Billie Jean-King, for being recognized by the Women’s Sports Foundation as one of four “standout” colleges and universities in the nation for making significant strides in providing equitable athletic opportunities for its female student-athletes.

• The women’s tennis team reached the MAC Championship in both the 2006 and 2007 seasons.

• The baseball team completed its most successful Mid-American Conference season in school history in 2007.

• The Bulls' men's soccer team has twice earned Top 20 designations and advanced to the MAC Championship since Manuel's arrival.

• The women’s rowing squad finished their best season with a second-place finish at the ECAC Metro Championships in 2006 and followed with a second place finish in 2007. They have also captured a pair of championships at the prestigious Dad Vail Championships in Philadelphia.

• During the 2005-06 season, the men’s basketball team earned Top 25 votes for the first time in school history after a record-breaking 11-1 start.

• The wrestling team was also ranked in the Top 25 during the 2005-06 season and advanced three wrestlers to the national championships, with one student-athlete earning a No. 2 ranking in the nation.

All of these accomplishments have not gone unnoticed. Manuel was honored by Sports Business Journal as a 2008 national 40-Under-40 honoree after receiving the same honor from Business First of Buffalo in Fall of 2007.

Shortly after his arrival on campus, Manuel made national waves by hiring Turner Gill, a former Heisman Trophy candidate and nationally-respected former assistant coach at Nebraska, as Buffalo’s 23rd head football coach in December of 2005. Gill became just the fifth African-American head football coach in Division I-A.

Gill’s hiring would lead to a cover story in USA Today on Buffalo’s leading position nationally on minority hiring, shortly after the Division of Athletics was recognized by the Laboratory for Diversity in Sport at Texas A&M University not only for the athletic department’s racial diversity, but also its gender diversity in its annual Diversity Athletics Awards. Buffalo was recognized for Overall Excellence in Diversity, Title IX Compliance and Employee Gender Diversity. UB was recognized again in 2007.

Under Manuel's leadership, two of the department's five largest financial gifts were secured. A $500,000 gift from Robert and Carol Morris allowed Buffalo to double its current weight room space with the addition of a sports performance center adjacent to UB Stadium. In addition, he secured a $640,000 gift from Dr. Harold Ortman that will benefit the men's and women's tennis programs. Concurrently, his focus on providing the coaches and student-athletes with the resources needed to compete for championships led to the hiring of the nationally renowned architectural firm HNTB to design a state-of-the-art multi-use fieldhouse that would benefit not only all of UB's athletic programs, but the University and Western New York community as a whole.

Manuel was named UB’s Director of Athletics on July 22, 2005, after serving as an associate athletic director at the University of Michigan where he oversaw the football and men’s basketball programs. His appointment came just eight weeks after former NCAA President Gene Corrigan issued a report commissioned by UB President John B. Simpson that identified the hiring of an athletics director to succeed Bob Arkeilpane, who resigned in 2003, as a key factor to UB’s athletic teams being successful in the Mid-American Conference.

“We have selected a director of athletics who is thoroughly steeped in the world of intercollegiate sports at the highest level, and one who knows the critical importance of balancing athletic and academic excellence,” Simpson said. “In searching for the ideal candidate for this role, we sought to identify a leader who is fully committed to fulfilling UB’s institutional mission of excellence, and one who understands at a fundamental level exactly what it will take to achieve this mission. Clearly, UB has found just such a leader in Warde Manuel.”

Noting Manuel's substantial and wide-ranging administrative experience at Michigan, Simpson said, "He knows exactly what true programmatic excellence looks like, and he has made it clear that he will accept nothing less for UB...As UB moves forward with the institutional transformation that is steadily taking shape through our ongoing strategic planning process, UB 2020, our successful pursuit of excellence is guided by the energy and vision of the strong senior leadership team we are assembling."

"I am looking forward to establishing Buffalo as a very competitive university within the MAC and nationally," Manuel stated upon his hiring. "It is a tremendous institution with the capability to reach great heights both within and outside of the Mid-American Conference. I look forward to working with President Simpson and the many talented people within the Division of Athletics, at the university and in the greater Buffalo community."

Manuel has 17 years of collegiate administrative experience with progressively greater levels of responsibility and leadership. He was one of Michigan's seven associate athletic directors with responsibilities that included the management of Michigan's Division I-A football and men's basketball programs. The University of Michigan Athletic Department has more than 700 student athletes, 25 sports and operates on a budget of $58 million. The sports that Manuel oversaw had operating budgets of $15 million and generated $45 million in revenue. He led the fundraising campaign for a $12 million Student-Athlete Academic Center that raised $14.5 million in gifts and pledges. He also participated in fundraising efforts that led to more than $19 million in facility renovations from 2001-05.

A native of New Orleans who was a consensus first-team High School All-American, Manuel earned multiple letters and started at defensive end in his sophomore year while playing football under legendary coach Bo Schembechler, the winningest football coach in Michigan history. His career was cut short by a neck injury and he subsequently earned two letters on the Wolverines' track and field team while earning a bachelor's degree in 1990. In the course of working on a PhD in Social Work and Psychology, he earned a master's degree in social work in 1993 and an MBA from Michigan's Ross School of Business in April 2005. He has conducted research in the areas of team, group and community organization theories, as well as student-athlete development within the confines of the team and the effects that coaches have on their development. He has taught sports marketing and collegiate athletics as an adjunct faculty member with Wayne State University's College of Education.

After graduating from Michigan, Manuel was coordinator of the university’s Wade H. McCree, Jr., Incentive Scholars Program from June 1990 to August 1993. The program is a partnership with The President’s Council of State Universities and Detroit Public Schools that helps students prepare for higher education at public universities in Michigan. He subsequently worked briefly as an academic advisor with the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) Athletic Association before being named assistant athletic director of academic affairs.

Manuel returned to Michigan in June 1996 as an executive staff assistant in the Athletic Department. In February 1998 he was named an assistant athletic director with responsibilities for overseeing operational facets of the university’s athletic program. He was named an associate athletic director in September 2000.