The Georgia Tech board of trustees met Thursday inside the Wardlaw Center at Bobby Dodd Stadium. There, Tech president Ángel Cabrera hinted the school will hire a new athletic director sooner rather than later.
“This is not gonna be a traditional academic search. This is different,” he said. “We’re going to use a process (from) the last time that we are going to use this time as well that tries to have a good balance of mutual inclusion of perspectives in that decision, but also speediness in the decision.”
Time certainly is of the essence for Tech as it looks to replace former AD J Batt, who left this month to take the same position at Michigan State. Batt spent a little more than 31 months in Atlanta, a timeline that included the hiring of coaches for three of Tech’s major sports — football and men’s and women’s basketball — and numerous notable fundraising initiatives.
Batt’s contract and appointment are expected to be voted on and approved Friday by the Michigan State board of trustees. His departure comes at an inopportune time, with July 1 right around the corner, the day when NCAA schools can start providing athletes with revenue-sharing payments.
“I’m very, very appreciative and grateful for everything that (Batt’s) done. He’s definitely leaving this program in a much, much better place than he encountered it two and a half years ago,” Cabrera said. “I was really sorry to see him go. I had hoped that he could see some of the major projects that he’s been working on so hard through, but I can only be grateful to have had his service to this place for two and a half years.”
Cabrera said moving forward that board members Mark Teixeira, David Rowland and Ron Johnson will serve as search advisers in vetting candidates to fill the vacancy left by Batt. A group representing, in Cabrera’s words, “different stakeholders” will meet the finalists for the position and then provide their feedback to Tech’s president. Cabrera said members of the group must sign a nondisclosure agreement to protect the confidentiality of the candidates.
Cabrera will then make the final decision and present his choice to the board for a vote.
“The interest for this position is extremely, extremely high,” Cabrera added. “This is going to be more of a question of deciding what is the right profile for this point of time for Georgia Tech?”
In the interim, Jon Palumbo, Tech’s deputy athletic director and chief operating officer, is leading Tech athletics. Palumbo gave his report Thursday, which included a highlight of Tech’s baseball, softball, men’s golf and women’s tennis teams making the NCAA Tournament and Kendall Ward qualifying for the women’s high jump at the NCAA Championships.
Palumbo also noted the Fanning Center, a 100,000-square-foot facility in the corner of Bobby Dodd Stadium, is scheduled to be completed in March, as well as stadium renovations which are scheduled to begin after the 2026 football season and be completed before the start of the 2027 season.
A former athletic director at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Palumbo also assured the board that the Georgia Tech Athletic Association has been planning for more than a year on how to handle revenue-sharing payments for athletes and that Tech will continue with its plan with or without a full-time AD.
“I think you see, business is moving forward. A lot going on,” Palumbo said. “I think we can’t miss a beat here. This is an important time here for our department, an important time for college athletics in general.”
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