Athletics loses two jobs
Budget cuts forced the athletics department to eliminate a full-time women’s track faculty coaching position and a full-time life skills coordinator and academic adviser position.
After helping coach sprinters, jumpers and hurdlers this past season, Lynne Nacke will no longer have a full-time paid position with CMU. Tera Albrecht’s position as an academic adviser was also eliminated.
Athletics also lost the leases on several cars which coaches used for recruiting.
Coaches will now be forced to use vehicles from a pool of eight cars. With different coaches recruiting periods varying throughout the year. Athletics Director Herb Deromedi said the new system should not have a negative effect on recruitment.
“Having the pool of cars should not be a problem, it will just be a matter of scheduling,” Deromedi said. “We should be able to coordinate with our coaches.”
Field hockey coach Cristy Freese will turn in her car at the end of the month. She will use the pool of cars when she needs to make recruiting trips.
“When I need a car, I will just have to go to athletics,” she said. “This system is more cost effective; but people have to realize that we need cars over here because of the nature of the business.”
Officials eliminated a women’s track coaching position because the department wanted both the men’s and women’s staff to be equal. The men’s staff includes one full-time assistant and a graduate assistant. While women’s track coach, Nacke’s position, has been eliminated she will be asked to return as a graduate assistant next season.
Women’s track coach Karen Lutzke said she expects Nacke to accept the position.
“We decided to cut a women’s track coach because the men have two full-time positions and the women have three,” said Marcy Weston, Senior Associate Athletics Director. “We decided to make the women’s track staffing the same as the men’s.”
The athletics department does not know if this will be its last round of cuts the University will force them to make.
“We are hopeful that these are our last cuts, but we don’t know,” Weston said. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”
