Jackson State University Names Wheeler Brown Interim AD

WHEELER BROWN
INTERIM DIRECTOR OF ATHLETICS
JACKSON STATE UNIVERSITY

JACKSON, Mississippi  -- Wheeler Brown has been named as the Interim Director of Athletics at Jackson State University by President Carolyn W. Meyers.JSU will conduct a formal search.

Brown brings over 26 years of athletic administration experience to the post at JSU. Prior to being named the Interim Director of Athletics, he served as the university’s Associate Athletic Director for Compliance.

Prior to coming to JSU, Brown served as the Associate Director of Athletics at Coppin State University (2013-2015). He also served as Director of Athletics at his alma mater North Carolina A&T State University (2007-2010).

Under his leadership the NCA&T women’s basketball team won the MEAC championship in 2009, as well as making an NCAA Tournament appearance. The Lady Aggies also posted victories over Wake Forest and UNC-Charlotte in the 2010 WNIT Tournament. The Aggies football and basketball teams were also competitive in league play.

Brown accepted his first collegiate athletics administration position in 1996, when he was named Assistant Athletics Director and Assistant men’s basketball coach at Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia. Two years later he was promoted to head men’s basketball coach. In 2001, Brown was named an Associate Athletics Director at Bowie State University. In 2002, he returned to the NCA&T Athletics Department. While at NCA&T Brown was one of 12 people, from an applicant pool of over 300, to be accepted into the NCAA Fellows Program in 2008. The program (currently called the NCAA Pathway Program), which is sponsored by the NCAA, pairs minorities and women who aspire to Athletic Directors at Division I programs with an executive mentor who is a Division I Athletic Director.

In addition to completing the NCAA Fellows program, Brown also graduated from the Leadership Institute for Ethnic Minority Males in 2005. He has also been a member of the NCAA Athletic Certification Committee, which oversees the certification of every Division I athletics program.

Brown began his professional career as a teacher and coach at C.L. Harper High School in Atlanta, Ga. After a four-year stay at Harper, he accepted the head men’s basketball coach position at Howard Community College in Columbia, Maryland in 1987. Over 11 seasons he compiled a 191-110 record as a collegiate head coach.

Brown is the only one of his three brothers to graduate high school. He credits his sister Edna Parker for inspiring him to attend college. She was the first in the family to earn a college education when she earned an undergraduate and graduate degree from Coppin State University.

Brown played for the Aggies football team from 1974-78, and graduated from N.C. A&T in 1979 with a degree in health and physical education. Brown, a native of Baltimore, Md., was a part of N.C. A&T’s first MEAC football championship in 1975. Brown was an all-conference performer at offensive tackle for the Aggies and was inducted into the N.C. A&T Hall of Fame in 2003.

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