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The Building Blocks Of Success With Fairfield’s Paul Schlickmann & Fordham’s Charles Guthrie

Guest Paul Schlickmann, Fairfield; Charles Guthrie, Fordham
24:11 watch

Fairfield Vice President for Athletics Paul Schlickmann and Fordham Director of Intercollegiate Athletics and Recreation Charles Guthrie join ADU’s Tai M. Brown at the 2025 NACDA Convention to offer insight into their building blocks for departmental success. Schlickmann: “You can talk about it but you have to live it everyday.” Schlickmann and Guthrie discuss the development of processes that align with their institution’s core values; how they establish culture among staff, coaches and student-athletes; and their philosophy on hiring. Schlickmann: “What I think we’ve done really well is with adapting to the changes along the way, we’ve maintained a very firm focus on our mission and our core values as a Jesuit Catholic university and we’ve maintained an intent focus on the student-athlete experience. We’ve tried to build our athletics culture with those principles in mind.”

The conversation is indexed below for efficient viewing (click the time stamp to jump to a specific question/topic).

  • - Tell me about John Gardner - you were both interns with him? Tell me about that situation.
  • - Charles, was your experience the same?
  • - What are one or two things that you feel might be the overlap between you two?
  • - So if you were to hire a graduate assistant and they needed somewhere to stay, would you let them live in your house and work them the entire time?
  • - Paul, nearly half of your sport programs at Fairfield have won conference championships. What has to be in place to make that happen?
  • - What is the unique value proposition of those four things specifically to you at Fairfield?
  • - Charles, you've been an AD at almost every level of college athletics - talk to me about building success at Fordham as you begin your tenure there.
  • - What is one of the things you hire for?
  • - What do you hire for to help you execute to the best of your talents and skillsets?
  • - So you've done everything [as an administrator] and discovered the things you are best at, so you can hire people who can do the things they're best at.
  • - Paul, talk to me about onboarding new people into the culture, the values, the process that you discussed earlier.
  • - Winning is a priority but how can you pay attention to that when you're trying to establish a culture as a new AD?
  • - Paul, at what point in your tenure do you really focus on winning?
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