UT DALLAS ATHLETICS HALL OF HONORS
DR. J. MICHAEL COLEMAN
Administrator
DR. J. MICHAEL COLEMAN, Associate Provost and Dean of Undergraduate Education, has been a strong advocate and supporter of the UTD intercollegiate athletics program and its scholar-athletes since the program’s beginning.
When UTD first began exploring the possibility of creating an athletics program back in the mid-1990’s, Dr. Coleman was sent as an informal faculty representative to the NCAA National Conference to get an idea of what adding athletics to UTD’s campus life might involve. There, he found himself sitting next to the faculty athletic representative from a large Midwest university and noticed an impressive, diamond-encrusted national championship ring this individual was wearing.
A week later, however, Dr. Coleman was back in front of the UTD faculty, trying to calm fears about where funding for the program was going to come from, and whether professors were going to need to offer special classes and tutoring for student-athletes. He addressed those concerns then and has continued to serve as a strong liaison between the department and the UTD faculty. Today, Dr. Coleman proudly boasts of dozens of scholar-athletes each year who continue to perform at high levels both on the field and in the classroom.
A graduate of Vanderbilt University, Dr. Coleman earned a doctorate from the University of Virginia and joined the UTD faculty in 1978 in what is now the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. He was appointed full professor in 1993 and became Dean of Undergraduate Education in 1997. He became Associate Provost in 1999.
