Staten Island, NY | The College of Staten Island Department of Athletics and Recreation has named Erin Van Nostrand as its new Associate Athletic Director for Compliance / Senior Woman Administrator, it was announced today. Van Nostrand, who has spent well over a decade as an administrator and coach at the Division III level, will begin her position on Wednesday, June 20.
“We are pleased to have Erin Van Nostrand join our team at the College of Staten Island,” Gomes said. “She brings a wealth of experience and knowledge in the areas of NCAA compliance, coaching, recruiting and athletic administration to the position. Erin will be a key member of our department’s leadership team as we strive to improve the experience of our student-athletes.”
As CSI’s newest Associate Athletic Director, Van Nostrand will oversee all compliance-related responsibility within the Athletics Department, to include individual team recruiting and retention oversight. She will work with head coaches to streamline the admissions process for incoming athletes and will work as a liaison with advisement, registration, financial aid and housing on campus to aid in the student-athlete experience. As Senior Woman Administrator, Van Nostrand will oversee emerging sports at CSI, specifically both Men’s and Women’s Tennis and Volleyball.
“I am really excited to be joining the staff at the College of Staten Island,” Van Nostrand said. “I feel that the sports programs and facilities are very much in line with institutions I have been associated with and I am genuinely enthusiastic to make this the next stop in my administrative career. It feels like a great fit and I can’t wait to get started.”
Van Nostrand has familiarity with the College and the CUNY system. Recently completing her second year at Lehman College as the department’s Associate Athletic Director for Compliance while doubling as Head Coach for Softball. There, she oversaw all compliance efforts for the 18-sport program, as well as chaired the Lehman College Campus Compliance Team, with goals to educate her campus colleagues on athletic department policy and best practices. On top of direct compliance duties, Van Nostrand was also charged with oversight of 12 varsity sports while assisting with budget and staff oversight program-wide.
After taking over the women’s softball program in April of 2016, Van Nostrand has since guided the Lightning side to two-straight top-four finishes in the CUNYAC Regular Season standings, and took a young side to the CUNYAC Final in 2018, falling 4-1 to CSI. In her time as coach, she helped raise over $30,000 in fund-raising revenue for the team, doubling as a home site administrator for a number of other sports. Her vast experience includes work in Lehman’s equipment room and management of Lehman’s Physical Education Center, including hiring and staffing Lehman’s vast work study contingent.
“Being a part of so many endeavors at Lehman College is typical to the day-to-day at most Division III schools,” she noted. “I feel it will translate really well at CSI in that I will take a lot of that learning and apply it to whatever I can do to make our program a better one. My job at CSI will be more concentrated on compliance and it will naturally allow me to grow the position and allow it to be a more dynamic part of the athletic department.”
Van Nostrand recognizes the legal angle of her day-to-day duties, as she will predominantly steady CSI through NCAA, CUNYAC, and campus-specific legislation governing academic eligibility and progress-towards-degree requirements, but she is equally excited to connect individually with CSI student-athletes to aid in their competitive collegiate experience.
“Making those lasting connections with student-athletes is why we do what we do. Compliance is a huge responsibility but the ability to make the smaller connections with students day to day and to have a broader impact with students across many different sports makes you understand how important being an athletics administrator is,” Van Nostrand explained. “When you create those type of relationships and spend even just a small amount of time getting to know the athletes and coaches, you learn more about what makes a big difference for them, and most of the time those changes are small and easy to attain when a team works together.”
A Baldwin, New York native, Van Nostrand graduated from Keene College in New Hampshire with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Physical Education with a minor in Teacher Certification in 1999. In 2004, she commenced her Head Coaching career in softball at Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, where she also served as the school’s Sports Information Director. She closed her career leading the Gators to a program-best 31-11 record in 2008 and four-straight top-four finishes while helping the college organize an inaugural Hall of Fame and the campus’ brand-new athletics website.
From 2008 to 2013, Van Nostrand set up shop at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, as Head Softball Coach, Game Administrator, and Movement Studies Instructor, leading the Lutes to an NCAA Division III National Championship in 2012 with an astounding 45-11 record. Along the way, she designed curriculum for PLU’s Physical Education program and organized and implemented game day protocol for a number of sports. She recruited a total of 55 student-athletes to the Lutes’ program, among them three Academic All-Americans and six Academic All-District nominees.
Van Nostrand’s experiences as an administrator and coach concurrently taught her a great deal about being effective in collegiate athletics while wearing multiple hats. “Winning the national title was a great accomplishment, but I think more than that I got a sense of the great landscape that Division III athletics represents,” she said. “Certainly being on both coasts and seeing multiple facilities and budgets and athletic departments and how they are structured is an eye-opening experience, and doing multiple things really allowed me to transition nicely into different endeavors. Understanding the challenges and meeting so many new and creative people helps you understand how to mold yourself into being able to help student-athletes and coaches achieve what they hope to achieve.”
In 2013, Van Nostrand stepped away from campus-specific athletics to become a Head Recruiting Coordinator at NCSA Athletic Recruiting in Chicago. There, she managed recruiting lists of potential college prospects to identify those that had the ability to play collegiately, conducting dozens of weekly recruiting evaluations. Working with athletes from over 20 different sports and extending relationships with them well past the recruiting window has gone a long way in developing her duties as a compliance officer.
“My experience with NCSA really helped me appreciate the compliance side of the NCAA, especially as it relates to the other side with parents and student-athletes,” she explained. “Compliance is an evolving and changing world and it’s relatively unfamiliar to athletes and parents and it can be stressful. It certainly made me more empathetic and being able to work with them while also balancing the legalities on the college side – it helps you realize that everyone wants to ultimately do the right thing, and the compliance office really needs to be that bridge that makes a student-athlete’s experience a successful one in college.”
Now at CSI, Van Nostrand hopes to parlay her diverse experience into building a dynamic compliance office at CSI, fostering positive student-athlete engagement.
“The first order I’ve given myself is to assess and really get a feel for the position and the role it plays,” she said. “I have always felt that CSI has everything in place to be the CUNY school that can make a mark nationally, and my goal is to help everyone get to that goal. The goal of the program is to continue to make those strides at being a national power and then do all the things I can do to help make that a reality.”
Van Nostrand will begin her appointment on June 20. The College is expanding their sports offerings to 18 sports beginning in 2018-19, adding both men’s and women’s indoor and outdoor track & field.
