This afternoon, President Bollinger announced that Peter E. Pilling will now serve as the Director of Intercollegiate Athletics and Physical Education. Pilling will replace the former director M. Dianne Murphy after she announced she would be stepping down from the position in September. Pillings has had experience in the field in his positions at Villanova University and Brigham Young University.

Pillings is currently the Vice President at the collegiate sports marketing company IMG College.  Today’s email states that one of Pillings’s priorities once he begins at Columbia will be, among other things, to improve the performance of the football team.  He will arrive on campus on February 23 to aid with the search for a new football coach, with Murphy remaining in her position until April 13.

The full email reads:

Dear fellow members of the Columbia community:

I am pleased to announce that I have appointed Peter E. Pilling as Columbia’s new Director of Intercollegiate Athletics and Physical Education. Peter has spent his career working at several of the most respected college sports programs in the country. His wealth of knowledge, experience, and enthusiasm will help Columbia Athletics build on a recent record of historic achievement and reach the new levels of excellence that we expect in everything we do as a great university.

As will soon become clear to our community of students, faculty, alumni, and friends, Peter brings to this important assignment not only professional expertise in sports management, but a deep and abiding commitment to the academic, research, cultural, and civic mission of higher education. He impressed everyone who has met him with his vision of the role athletics, health, and wellness can play in enhancing the educational experience of all our students, as well as his respect for the unique values of the Ivy League in the larger landscape of intercollegiate athletics.

Peter comes to Columbia having held high level positions in the distinguished athletic departments of Brigham Young University, Villanova University, and other public and private colleges and universities. He is currently Vice President at IMG College, a collegiate sports marketing company, where he has had extensive experience in serving the athletics departments of Division I schools including Brigham Young, Texas Christian University, Baylor University, and the U.S. Air Force Academy.

At Columbia, Peter will build on the strong foundation of an athletics program that, under the leadership of Dr. M. Dianne Murphy, has produced its best years in Columbia’s modern history. Yet Peter knows that among his highest priorities in the months and years ahead is ensuring that the high standards of excellence and competitiveness we have achieved across our women’s and men’s teams extends to our football program, whose dedicated players and coaches deserve the full support of a university community committed to their success. Peter joins us at a moment when we also all appreciate the importance in a long-term investment in the health and wellness of our entire campus community.

While moving forward immediately on the football coaching search, Peter will join us on campus on February 23. We are delighted that in order to help ensure a smooth transition, Dianne will continue in her position until April 13.

I want to take one more opportunity to say how grateful we all are to Dianne for her decade of great service to Columbia. I also want to thank everyone involved in this search for the guidance and insight they provided throughout this process—and for their proud commitment to Columbia Athletics.

For the present, please join me in congratulating Peter Pilling on his appointment as our new Director of Intercollegiate Athletics and Physical Education and in welcoming him, his wife Deanna, and their family to Columbia University in the City of New York.

Sincerely,

Lee C. Bollinger