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Michigan State to name Beekman permanent athletic director on Monday

He briefly served as acting president after Lou Anna Simon resigned in the fallout from the Larry Nassar scandal and before the board appointed Engler as the interim president.
Credit: Courtesy of Michigan State University
Bill Beekman

Michigan State University will take the interim away from Bill Beekman's title and make him the permanent athletic director at the school, two sources close to interim president John Engler told the Free Press on Friday.

Beekman has been the interim athletic director since Mark Hollis stepped aside hours before ESPN ran a story questioning the behavior of the department when it comes to sexual assault.

Attempts to contact MSU were unsuccessful on Friday night.

Beekman has been vice president and secretary of the MSU Board of Trustees since 2008 and previously served as executive director of the MSU Alumni Association. According to his university bio and LinkedIn pages, the 1989 MSU graduate was hired by his alma mater in 1995 as an administrator with the MSU HealthTeam and served as assistant dean for finance and planning in the College of Human Medicine from 1998-2004. He also has served as a senior consultant to the provost and the vice president for finance and operations.

He briefly served as acting president after Lou Anna Simon resigned in the fallout from the Larry Nassar scandal and before the board appointed Engler as the interim president.

Engler named Beekman as the interim AD a week after taking office. Beekman has no experience in athletic management listed on his LinkedIn page or MSU bio.

“Just as the Board of Trustees had confidence in Bill to keep things moving as acting president, I have confidence that he will provide very capable leadership of the athletic department during this time of transition,” Engler said in a February release.

At the time, Engler said a national search will begin shortly for a permanent athletic director and that no internal candidates from MSU will be considered.

MSU has not made Beekman available to reporters during his approximately three-month tenure as interim athletic director. He did speak briefly in February after a trustees meeting, though it was not an organized media event.

Beekman takes over a 25-sport athletic department that had 713 athletes and accounted for $103,920,895 in revenue and $96,008,462 in expenses during the 2016-17 school year, according to the U.S. Department of Education data.

Despite being an interim president, Engler has been reshaping the upper levels of MSU's administration.

He named Bob Young as general counsel, giving him a three-year deal, despite objections by a couple of board members.

The board is currently doing a national search for a new president, but has said it will be at least the end of next school year — in June 2019 — before that person is in place.

Contact David Jesse: 313-222-8851 or djesse@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @reporterdavidj

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