University of Cincinnati Magazine April 2012 : Page 5Bearcats celebrate their Big East championship after defeating Connecticut. BIG EAST CHAMPS WELCOME A.D. The Bearcats have a new leader in Whit Babcock, who joined UC as director of athletics in October. Babcock came from the University of Missouri, where he spent five years as executive associate director. Babcock took over for Mike Thomas, who left for the University of Illinois. Prior to his years at Mizzou, he worked at Auburn and West Virginia and graduated from James Madison University where he was the captain of the baseball team. He and his wife, Kelly, have three sons, Andrew, Brett and Eli. “Cincinnati is certainly a program on the rise and can compete successfully aca-demically and athletically on a national stage,” says Babcock. Since coming on board, the new AD has already seen three Big East trophies returned to campus. The Bearcats football program won a share of the Big East champ-ionship for the third time in four years, which yielded an invite to the Autozone Liberty Bowl in Memphis, where they beat Vanderbilt and finished the season ranked 25th by the Associated Press. The UC women’s volleyball team cap-tured the Big East Championship tourna-ment title for the first time in program history in November. The volleyball team advanced to the second round in UC senior Missy Harpenau delivers a spike. photos/Dottie pho ph p ho h ot o t os os/ o s/ s / D Dott Dot Do ot o tt t t ie iS i eS e Stover S t tov to ov o ve v e r $418M: RESEARCH The University of Cincinnati and its affili-ates topped $418 million in research funding for fiscal year 2011. Though down $25 million from 2010, the drop was expected as many funding opportunities from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act matured. “The good news is that the rest of research funding remains steady and strong, despite challenging economic times,” explained William Ball, interim vice president for research, in November. Industry partnerships, he said, continue to be an important compo-nent of UC’s research endeavors. In the 2011 fiscal year, UC was awarded $18.9 million from industry collaborators, up 24 percent from the previous year. UC remains designated as a “very high research activity” university by the Carnegie Commission and is listed by the National Science Foundation as No. 25 among public institutions for federal research expenditures. the NCAA tournament. After the sea-son, 12-year head coach Reed Sunahara announced his resignation, and Babcock hired Molly Alvey from Houston. The third champ was grad student Eric Finan, who won both the Big East cross country title and was named Male Scholar Athlete of the Year. SPIDERS DANCE University of Cincinnati www.magazine.uc.edu March University of Cincinnati www.magazine.uc.edu 2011 University of Cincinnati www.magazine.uc.edu April 2012 2010March 2010 5 photo/UC Athletics photo/Jay Yocis Publication List |
