Penn AD Grace Calhoun leaving to become Brown AD

Penn athletic director Grace Calhoun announced Friday she is leaving her job after seven years. What’s most interesting about Calhoun’s next destination: it’s basically the same job within the same league.

Calhoun is moving to Brown, her alma mater.

“I was not looking to make a move,” Calhoun said, although she had been reported to have been on short lists for recent AD openings at UCLA and Boston College. Conversations with Brown’s president about the future of athletics there eventually evolved into what became a job offer, with the title of vice president, which, Calhoun said, is a signal indicating, “Brown is now in a position to make this a university-level priority.”

She meant athletics as a whole, saying that at Penn, that commitment had been there.

“I increasingly felt the tug to the alma mater was strong,’' Calhoun said. “This was really tough because I absolutely adored being at Penn. I would put our team up against anybody’s in the country.”

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Calhoun plans to stay at Penn through April 19, and will continue as chair of the NCAA Division I council until her term ends in June. Rudy Fuller, a senior associate athletic director, will serve as interim AD, the school announced, until a permanent appointment is made.

In addition to internal candidates, a short list of possible candidates would include Alanna Shanahan, Sherryta Freeman, and Dan Leibovitz. Shanahan, now vice provost at Johns Hopkins, was athletic director there after being Penn’s deputy AD. She’s a Penn grad, as is Leibovitz, now associate commissioner of the Southeastern Conference. Freeman – a graduate of Dartmouth, which also happens to be looking for an AD – is AD at Lafayette, after working as an associate AD at Penn and at Temple.

Calhoun lists a rise in overall competitiveness across teams as a highlight of her tenure, along with “our innovative programming, building out the Leadership Academy with Wharton, our sports performance department with Penn Medicine, as well as taking a fundamentally different approach to recreation, that it should be embedded with the campus wellness program. I do feel a strong foundation was put in place for whoever comes in next.”

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A release from Penn noting her departure also pointed to a “successful development campaign that is on track to raise $200 million by the end of the academic year.”

So her work was done?

“Oh, never,’' Calhoun said. “Absolutely not. … The job’s never done, but you get to the point where you’re maintaining a little more than putting in pieces and building.”

At Brown, Calhoun suggested, she’ll be building again.