ST. JOSEPH, Mo. — The Griffon family welcomed Andrew Carter this Monday as Missouri Western's ninth director of athletics in a press conference at Spratt Stadium.
Missouri Western President Dr. Elizabeth Kennedy introduced Carter in front of a packed house in the Rogers Pharmacy Hall of Fame Room. Dr. Kennedy mentioned Carter's intercollegiate athletic career has spanned over 30 years with 25 of those years spent as an athletic director.
"With that much experience, there's very little that he hasn't seen," Dr. Kennedy said. "The majority of Andy's career has been at the NCAA Division II level, so he brings an understanding of our ethics mission. At universities like Missouri Western, balancing competition, classroom and community, the three C's of our athletics department is something Andy clearly has had the requisite experience for."
Before cementing his stamp as a Griffon, Carter spent five years at Minot State University. Missouri Western's ninth athletic director says his time at schools like Missouri Baptist University built a faith-based approach to connecting on a personal level with his peers.
"My wife and I have prayed over this for several months and just felt like this connection was was something that was going to be really special," Carter said. "What I'm going to bring as an athletic director is I love people. It's going to be relationship-based. Everything we do is going to be about building great relationships, whether that's in the department, with our student-athletes, with our colleagues across the campus with the community and building those strong relationships so that we can all grow together. We're going to focus on a culture that is inclusive – that allows people to want to be part of what we're doing."
Carter was appointed to the NCAA Division II Membership Committee in 2019 and has served in numerous other leadership roles at NCAA conference levels, giving him the abilitiy to take hold of an athletic department that was vacant of an official athletic director for nine months. In that time, Senior Woman Administrator
Theresa Grosbach served as Interim Athletic Director and held down the fort while Missouri Western searched for somebody to take the baton. Now in command, the new Griffon in charge says he believes in connecting the universtity's needs with the needs of its inhabitants, including the student-athletes and the adminstration.
"I think my job is to connect with everybody and understand what it is that they want out of this experience," Carter said. "What are they trying to accomplish? How does that fit in with the mission of the department with the mission of the university and connect all those things through? We'll quickly go through some some planning some analysis of, okay, each unit in the department, this is who we are today and then what is our aspiration and then kind of develop a plan on how we get to the aspirational plae. That process allows was all to get on the same page with where we're going. It also allows me to spend a lot of time with each of those heads of units, whether that's a head coach or head of a staff unit and spend time in building those relationships and trying to find out what they are thinking."
Missouri Western is still in need of a director of external relations. Even before his official announcement, Carter says he's been planning his priorities around filling those types of posistions.
"I'm getting caught up to speed really fast on that, and we'll get that where it needs to be quickly," Carter said. "But with following all of our due diligence to make sure we get the right people. The people we bring in to the inside are so important to what the result is going to look like. We'll do it right. We'll take our time, and we'll get the right people the part of our team."
