{"id":903,"date":"2018-06-25T19:21:57","date_gmt":"2018-06-25T19:21:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moebergfilm.org\/?p=903"},"modified":"2018-06-25T19:21:57","modified_gmt":"2018-06-25T19:21:57","slug":"a-pioneer-charts-his-own-course","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jawidesign.com\/test\/moeberg_dev\/2018\/06\/25\/a-pioneer-charts-his-own-course\/","title":{"rendered":"A pioneer charts his own course"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Washington Post<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a025 Jun 2018
\n<\/span>BY GENE WANG IN PULLMAN, WASH. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Read Full Article Here<\/a>.<\/span><\/h1>\n<\/hgroup>\n<\/header>\n
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PHOTOS BY RAJAH BOSE FOR THE WASHINGTON POST<\/em>

\nAthletic Director Pat Chun arrived at footballmad Washington State after more than five years as Florida Atlantic\u2019s athletic director. \u201cIt\u2019s not lost on me the significance of being the first Asian American athletic director at a Power Five,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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From the time he began playing sports as a young boy with neighborhood buddies, Pat Chun stood out as the only Asian American on the block. It\u2019s no different professionally for Chun, who has grown accustomed to being the only Asian American in the room since he started in athletics administration.<\/p>\n

The pioneering athletic director at Washington State frequently deploys humor as a way to address that distinction. He may offer an amusing anecdote about growing up as the only son of Korean immigrants, with a father who taught taekwondo \u2014 \u201ctalk about stereotypical,\u201d Chun said, chuckling \u2014 and a mother who worked as a grocery-store clerk.<\/p>\n

Or he may elicit laughter by mentioning some of the travails linked to a career in which Asian Americans have been underrepresented to such a degree that, through 15 years as an understudy at Ohio State, his alma mater, he had no one of his or any other Asian ethnicity to count as a mentor.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me put it this way,\u201d said Chun, 43, who arrived at Washington State in February following 51\/ years as Florida Atlantic\u2019s<\/p>\n

2 athletic director. \u201cIt\u2019s not lost on me the significance of being the first Asian American athletic director at a Power Five.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like many Asian American children of his generation, Chun\u2019s parents pushed him to be a doctor or a lawyer. But Chun knew neither of those occupations was for him after taking a liking to sports as a child in the Cleveland suburbs.<\/p>\n

Athletics served as a vehicle for Chun to assimilate. His friends were white, and Chun shared a love of sports with them. They collected and traded baseball cards and gathered to watch football games on television. His closest friends remain those with<\/p>\n

he played football in junior high and high school.<\/p>\n

Still, his peers occasionally reminded Chun that he wasn\u2019t exactly the same. He hasn\u2019t forgotten the slanty-eye gestures or teasing in a mocking Asian accent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe joking comments that were made to you growing up would not be tolerated today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Even as Chun immersed himself in sports, his mother, a classically trained pianist, was far more concerned with him practicing the violin. Eventually, she relented, allowing Chun to drop violin lessons in the sixth grade to concentrate more on sports. All the while, she remained skeptical about his career choice, even as he began moving up as an administrator at Ohio State.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d have to be an Asian American to understand this,\u201d said Chun, whose parents divorced when he was in the eighth grade. \u201cLike a lot of Asian parents, they put this crazy emphasis on college and dreams of Ivy League schools and things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Chun and his wife, Natalie, a former Buckeyes softball player, were discussing starting a family, his mother didn\u2019t hesitate to offer more advice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is 2002, 2003, and I\u2019m already well into my athletic career, and we were talking about having a baby, and my mom pulls me aside and says, \u2018 Hey, if you guys are going to have kids, you really need to start thinking about getting a real job,\u2019 \u201d Chun said, laughing. \u201cAt that point, you know you\u2019re not going to win that debate with your mom. It\u2019s like: \u2018Mom, just trust me. I\u2019m on a great path here.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018A modern success story\u2019<\/p>\n

When the news of his hiring at Washington State became public, Chun began receiving emails from Asian American administrators and coaches from other schools congratulating him.<\/p>\n

Much of that correspondence came from well-wishers he had yet to meet in person. Still, Chun indicated, he couldn\u2019t help but feel an unspoken kinship given his position of prominence within the small community of Asian Americans involved in college athletics.<\/p>\n

\u201cPat, like a lot of successful people, he\u2019s so focused on doing what he needs to do that I think he sometimes maybe isn\u2019t as proud of that as he needs to be,\u201d Washington State President Kirk Schulz said. \u201cPat\u2019s a little bit humble that way. He\u2019s just a modern success story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chun gained a reputation as a skilled fundraiser at Ohio State, having overseen record contributions to the Buckeyes\u2019 athletic department that included $42 million in 2012 and $41 million the previous year. A \u201crelationship builder\u201d was how former Ohio State athletic director Andy Geiger, who gave Chun his first job as an intern, described his protege.<\/p>\n

He became athletic director at Florida Atlantic in 2012, and three years later, the school announced the largest single gift in its history: $16 million. With Washington State\u2019s athletic department facing a budget deficit of $67 million, according to a recently released internal audit, Schulz made it his priority hiring a candiwhom date with a deft fundraising touch.<\/p>\n

As an added benefit, Chun had hired Lane Kiffin to be FAU\u2019s football coach in December 2016. Chun\u2019s experience dealing with the occasionally controversial Kiffin reassured Schulz and other Washington State officials that he could forge a fruitful working relationship with the Cougars\u2019 colorful football coach, Mike Leach.<\/p>\n

Chun flew to Dallas\/Fort Worth International Airport for an initial off-campus interview in January, volunteering to be the first of eight candidates to meet with the search committee. Six of the semifinalists, according to Schulz, were sitting athletic directors. The other was a top deputy Schulz said would be one in the near future.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you start getting more involved, then it hits you: \u2018Wow, no one really looks like you,\u2019 \u201d Chun said. \u201cYou never really quantify these things until you start competing for jobs and you\u2019re trying to get to different levels of your career. It\u2019s like, \u2018Wow.\u2019 It does hit you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The conversation with Chun left such a positive impression, Schulz recalled, that one member of the search committee, minutes after Chun left the room, said with the utmost sincerity, \u201cI think we\u2019re done.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018It means a little bit more\u2019<\/p>\n

Chun was to be introduced at Washington State on Jan. 17, but university officials pushed the ceremony back a week because of a tragedy that had left the campus reeling. The day before Chun\u2019s originally scheduled news conference, Tyler Hilinski, a redshirt sophomore quarterback on track to start for the Cougars this season, committed suicide in his Pullman apartment.<\/p>\n

The sensitivity with which Chun navigated those tragic circumstances endeared him to the football program, the athletic department and the Washington State community, colleagues said.<\/p>\n

Continue reading the article HERE<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a025 Jun 2018 BY GENE WANG IN PULLMAN, WASH. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Read Full Article Here. PHOTOS BY RAJAH BOSE FOR THE WASHINGTON POST Athletic Director Pat Chun arrived at footballmad Washington State after more than five years as Florida Atlantic\u2019s athletic director. \u201cIt\u2019s not lost on me the significance of being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[526],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jawidesign.com\/test\/moeberg_dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jawidesign.com\/test\/moeberg_dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jawidesign.com\/test\/moeberg_dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jawidesign.com\/test\/moeberg_dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jawidesign.com\/test\/moeberg_dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.jawidesign.com\/test\/moeberg_dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jawidesign.com\/test\/moeberg_dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jawidesign.com\/test\/moeberg_dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jawidesign.com\/test\/moeberg_dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}