Jeff Bourne

/ General

Jeff Bourne

Position:
Director of Athletics
Weight:
0
Class:
Redshirt
Hometown:
,

Jeff Bourne is in his second decade as JMU’s athletics director, having already overseen a period of dramatic enhancements on behalf of all of the university’s student-athletes and coaches. At JMU, Bourne leads a program that is competitive within the Colonial Athletic Association as well as at regional and national levels and that has positioned itself to continue to play a major role in intercollegiate athletics.

Bourne has overseen processes to ensure the academic, athletic and social success of all JMU student-athletes. In 2012-13, JMU celebrated an 80 percent graduation rate among its student-athletes, compared with JMU’s general student population rate of 81 percent. When Bourne arrived at JMU, the graduation rate among student-athletes was 71 percent and the overall student rate 79 percent. Annual fundraising has improved dramatically under Bourne’s leadership, with an overall increase of more than 400 percent during the past eight years. Student-athlete support services and facility improvements also have been highlights of the past 10 years. He also recently served on the NCAA FCS Football Championship selection committee for four years, including as the chairman in 2013.

JMU enjoys a tremendous academic reputation nationally as evidenced by its continued placement among national and regional publications. For the 16th consecutive year the university ranked as the top public, master’s-level university in the South in the highly regarded annual poll on academic quality conducted by U.S. News & World Report for its guidebook, 2010 America’s Best Colleges.

During Bourne’s tenure more than 1,000 conference academic honors have been given to JMU student-athletes, including CAA scholar-athletes, CAA commissioner’s academic award winners and ECAC scholar-athletes of the year. JMU also has had four student-athletes receive NCAA post-graduate scholarships.

Perhaps the best measure of success is the NCAA’s Academic Progress Rate. JMU has ranked well above the NCAA minimum standard for each of the program’s rating periods, and no JMU teams have been subject to APR-related penalties. Seven of JMU’s 18 teams had APR scores ranking in at least the 90th percentile of their respective sports in the most-recent APR release, the greatest number reaching that mark among any of the 12 CAA institutions.

Providing outstanding athletics facilities is a primary focus, and JMU will continue to make significant progress in this front during the coming year. In 2009-10, the new Veterans Memorial Stadium complex for baseball and softball was completed; work was completed in summer of 2012 on University Park, including practice and competition facilities for soccer, lacrosse, track and field and cross country; and the $62 Million, 20-month process to renovate Bridgeforth Stadium/Zane Showker Field finished prior to the 2011 season. The football stadium expansion project increased seating at the facility to nearly 25,000 and featured