Her job is to improve all aspects of the University and sports programs are an incredibly relevant part, like it or not. It also a major economic driver in Connecticut. Letting it slowly implode because she has no real understanding or appreciation for athletics beyond girls lax doesn't cut it in 2014. Moreover, we are not competing with Yale on the academic side either. All things need improvement - STEM research and programs, better commercialization of IP and tech, and more collocation and active collaboration with technology companies. It's the only university I can think of without meaningful commercial technology clusters surrounding it. She might want to take a drive up to Cambridge to get a clue.
No, I'm not impressed at all. Of course, I could be wrong.
Agreed on the mission. They went out and spent more money on a coaching staff than they ever have before. So it isn't like they didn't realize the importance. So maybe they hired the wrong guy. That doesn't mean she doesn't care. It just means they hired the wrong guy. And if by caring you mean hiring a new coach every 6 months till you get the right one, that's just a little silly.
As to the academics...UCONN was so woefully underfunded for so many years they have been playing catchup since the 90s. The fact that there are continued phases of billion $ projects shows that we are continually trying to raise our game academically. We were never competing with Yale. Now we are "almost" competing with Yale in some regards. You can't build this kind of stuff in a day, and she still has only been here around 3 years. Everything I've heard out of her shows that she gets all of that. But she can't snap her fingers and have someone build a tech cluster around the campus. These things are a UCONN problem, but like with Diaco, she inherited most of it, and IMO she is doing what she needs to in order to bring the University forward.
Now, if there are specific things she has done wrong? Happy to debate those. Maybe she is a bumbling idiot who can't get anything done. But all I see/hear/read is that stuff is getting done every day.
It is a little odd for someone to point at the state of something and blame the person that showed up yesterday for 50 years of neglect.