Susan Bassett, athletics director at William Smith College, has been named as chair of the Division III Management Council.

A member of the Management Council since 1999, Bassett also has served on the NCAA Committee on Sportsmanship and Ethical Conduct, the Committee on Women's Athletics and the Division III Men's and Women's Swimming and Diving Committee.

Bassett became the athletics director at William Smith in 1995. During her tenure, the Herons have added two varsity programs and have won two national championships in field hockey, one in 1997 and one in 2000.

In 2000, William Smith was recognized by Sports Illustrated for Women as one of the top athletics programs in the nation.

Bassett began her career as a coach at William Smith, where she oversaw the swimming and diving team and produced 22 all-Americans and one national champion. She also was an assistant coach for the lacrosse and field hockey teams. Bassett then coached the swimming and diving teams at Union College (New York), where she was the 1993 Division III Coach of the Year and a three-time New York state coach of the year.

She is a graduate of Ithaca College, and she earned a master's degree in physical education from Indiana University, Bloomington, in 1980.

In addition to Bassett being named as chair of the Management Council, Bates College Athletics Director Suzanne R. Coffey was named to replace Bassett as vice-chair. Coffey has been a member of the Management Council since 2001, and she also has served on the Division III Championships Committee, Division III Interpretations and Legislation Committee and the Division III Membership Committee. She is a recent appointee to the NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics.

Coffey, who also is associate professor of physical education and chair of the department of physical education at Bates, was named athletics director in 1991. Before her arrival at Bates in 1985, Coffey was a member of the coaching staffs at Bowdoin College and the University of New Hampshire.

She was recognized as the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletics Administrators (NACWAA) Division III national administrator of the year in 2001, and she was named a Sport Ethics Fellow with the Institute for International Sport in 1999. Coffey received the Institute for International Sport's Frank W. Keaney Award in May 2002, which recognized her "commitment to the scholar-athlete ideal."

Coffey earned an undergraduate degree in studio art with a minor in philosophy from New Hampshire. She earned a master's degree in public policy from the University of Southern Maine's Edmund Muskie School of Public Service, where she is now a doctoral candidate.