CoSIDA has named its graduate internship grant in memory of the late Phil Langan, who served the organization as secretary-treasurer from 1972-77.

Langan died November 23 after suffering a heart attack.

The Phil Langan Graduate Intern Grant is an annual $10,000 allocation to assist member institution sports information offices with funds to support a graduate internship.

Langan not only held the secretary-treasurer position in the 1970s but also wrote the Digest, the organization’s newsletter, and spearheaded the annual workshop.

“When CoSIDA made the decision to leave Chicago in 1972 and start rotating its workshop site, it was Phil Langan who was charged with the responsibility of making sure that the decision would better serve the membership,” said Langston Rogers, senior associate athletics director/media relations at Mississippi and a CoSIDA past-president. “Phil was the glue that held us together during that important period in our history.

“I regret that our current membership didn’t get to know him. Phil Langan is most deserving of this recognition.”

Langan, who was inducted into the CoSIDA Veterans Hall of Fame this past summer in San Antonio, was the SID at Ithaca, Princeton and Brown, and served as an athletics department development officer and community-relations director at Cornell. He left his SID position at Brown to become a vice president with both the Hartford Whalers and the Pittsburgh Penguins.

After leaving the NHL in 1996, Langan operated a successful sports public relations consulting business.

Fred Nuesch, who served as secretary and Digest editor of CoSIDA from 1979-2002, said, “I don’t think there is any CoSIDA member in the 1960s and ’70s who doesn’t think of Phil first when you mention the organization.

“Yet the thing I remember most about him was his making the new members of the organization feel welcome, especially the younger ones. Naming the scholarship is an appropriate gesture for someone who did so much for CoSIDA.”