An extraordinary career. An even more extraordinary woman. Charlotte Athletics Director Emerita Judy Rose highlights the Conference USA 2020 Hall of Fame Class. One of the nation’s most respected directors of athletics, Rose enjoyed 43 years with the Charlotte athletics department, including 28 as a trailblazing athletic director. The C-USA Hall of Fame selection was her third such honor this year as she was also inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame and the inaugural Charlotte 49ers Hall of Fame.

Video: Hall of Fame Spotlight on Judy Rose
 
Rose was involved in sports from an early age, and the path she carved out during the span of her career in athletics was filled with cultivating relationships, perceiving opportunities, trusting her instincts and growing at every turn. Her legacy is cemented into every athletic building on campus, most noticeably the one that bears her name, the Judy W. Rose Football Center, but even more importantly, into the university, the community, student-athletes, colleagues and all the people she worked with throughout her career.
 
Growing up in a small town in South Carolina, Rose and her five siblings were always active playing sports, and she participated in women’s basketball, the only organized sport available to females at that time, from 7^th to 12^th grade. She also played recreational tennis in the summer which would come into play further down the road. With aspirations to become a high school coach, Rose attended Winthrop University and played basketball. After graduation in 1974, she began a master’s degree program at Tennessee and served as an assistant women’s basketball coach under the legendary Pat Head Summitt. Both of them shared a very competitive nature and Rose said she learned a lot from Summitt, especially the value of accountability. She also had shifted her career interest to college sports.
 
With her master’s degree complete in 1975, Rose found a plethora of jobs that became open for women in college sports, due to the heightened enforcement of Title IX at that point. She considered each offer carefully, but noted that the job responsibilities in each included coaching of more than one sport, teaching and oversight of non-sports related areas at the university. She ultimately chose Charlotte, accepting the women’s basketball head coaching job, but also taking on responsibilities as the tennis coach, teaching a PE course each semester and supervising the lifeguards. At that time, the women’s basketball program did not have scholarships. She could have never imagined her entire career would be at Charlotte.
 
In her first position with the 49ers and at every step along the way, Rose said that the strong leadership at the university (she worked with four Chancellors during her career) was proactive, listened to her and allowed her to grow in the job. As time went on, Rose gravitated toward the administrative side of sports. She was offered the position of Assistant Athletic Director, but made certain that she would work with both the men’s and women’s programs. She was named Associate Athletic Director in 1985 and that eventually led to her being named athletic director at Charlotte in 1990, just the third woman to hold that title in college athletics. With the changing scope of the AD job and the lack of females in an AD role, Rose was introduced to two female executives in Charlotte by then-Chancellor Dr. Jim Woodward and also encouraged to become more involved in the community through fundraising, as well as seek out mentor athletic directors within the NCAA. Rose said she benefitted greatly from the guidance of Dale Halton (former CEO of Pepsi Bottling Company) and Pat Rodgers (President and CEO of Rodgers Builders), relationships that continued to present day. A few years later when Charlotte hosted the NCAA Men’s Final Four, she had the opportunity to interact with the men’s basketball committee, including two prominent athletic directors in C.M. Newton and DeLoss Dodds, who took her under their wing and became significant mentors as well.
 
Under her leadership, Charlotte athletics reached new heights. Rose oversaw more than $100 million of facility expansion and renovations, and guided a department that saw 44 NCAA Tournament team appearances and 70 conference titles. During the last 10 years of her tenure, the 49ers enjoyed 20 NCAA Tournament team appearances and 40 league titles. Fourteen of the 49ers programs advanced to NCAA Tournament play or won a league title or both under Rose's guidance. The 49ers added seven sports under Rose's guidance, including the unveiling of the 49ers football program in 2013. The football program took the second-fastest track to the FBS level after spending just two seasons at the FCS level. Charlotte was invited to join Conference USA before holding even its first practice.
 
Her leadership roles extended into the national landscape of college sports organizations and in the local community. In 1999-2000, she became the first female to serve on the prestigious NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee. She served as President of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) in 2003-04, was the NACDA Southeast Region Athletics Director of the Year in 2001 and a finalist for the Sports Business Journal AD of the Year award in 2013. She received the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award at Charlotte Business Journal's 17th Annual Women in Business Achievement Awards celebration.
 
With the growth of the Charlotte athletics program and facilities, also came the evolution of the department staff and programs to support it. She developed the 49ers Community Service and NCAA Life Skills programs and Sports Performance and Health Care teams as well as the program's Strength and Conditioning, Compliance, Facilities, Information Technology and Media Production Departments. She expanded the 49ers' academic services, athletic training, marketing, media relations and ticketing departments, partnered with Nike as 49ers' Athletic Apparel provider and branded the university's athletic programs as the Charlotte 49ers.
 
Rose has said the addition of football is what she would consider her major accomplishment at Charlotte, also calling it the most challenging. It was only fitting that she was bestowed not only a tremendous honor, but a complete surprise, when then-Chancellor Dr. Philip DuBois and Halton announced the naming of the new football facility in 2012 as the Judy W. Rose Football Center.  DuBois said, “We might be the only place with a football building named after a woman. But Judy IS the athletic department. She’s raised the money for every athletic facility we have on campus. I can’t think of a better tribute.”
 
Upon her retirement in 2018, Rose was named Athletic Director Emerita and to the state’s Order of the Long Leaf Pine, among the highest honors possible from the university and the state of North Carolina, reflecting her career of leadership, integrity and dedication to the education and well-being of the student-athletes, as well as her momentous impact and exemplary service to the state of North Carolina.