Dee Kennedy is currently an Associate Director of Enforcement at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). In this role, she leads major investigations into potential bylaw violations across all three athletic divisions and assists with processing cases where violations have been substantiated. At the NCAA, she is a member of the NCAA’s Academic Integrity Unit, a group formed to serve as a resource for everyone who plays a role in ensuring integrity in the classroom, including athletics administrators, coaches, faculty athletics representatives, academic advisors, and student-athletes. She also serves in several other leadership positions within the NCAA and is a liaison to membership groups including the WBB Student-Athlete Engagement Group and the Minority Opportunity and Inclusion Committee (MOIC).
Prior to joining the NCAA staff in 2019, Kennedy was the Associate Athletics Director for Academic Support and Student Services at the University of North Florida for eight years. In her role as Associate AD, she assisted in recruiting, evaluated incoming students for admissibility and monitored the academic progression of current students. She also supervised staff which contributed to 16 consecutive semesters of an Athletic Department GPA >3.0. Her area also developed and implemented programming in various areas, including academic, personal and career development. Additionally, she worked closely with Title IX, Counseling Services, Disability Resources, the Registrar, International Affairs, Dean of Students, and LGBT Offices and was committed to supporting and educating coaches in areas affecting student athlete well-being. She is also a founding member of UNF’s PERCH initiative.
Kennedy also worked at the University of Texas San Antonio where she was charged with helping develop an academic support program that could meet the needs of a growing athletic department as it added football as a DI sport. In addition, she assisted in Compliance and helped with evaluating the initial eligibility of incoming student-athletes.
Prior to pursuing a full-time career in college athletics, Kennedy was an assistant professor at the University of Georgia, the faculty advisor for the joint JD/MEd (Sport Management) program and led UGA’s Athletics Department’s mentoring program. She also worked in the legal and marketing department at the Collegiate Licensing Company and practiced law as an associate at the Fulcher Firm in Augusta, Georgia. She also has experience working in the criminal justice field.
Along with being an adjunct professor in Sports Management for UNF since 2011, she also taught classes in the criminal justice department at UNF. She has also been an adjunct professor at the University of Georgia and Mississippi State University.
In 2003, Kennedy became the first graduate of UGA’s joint JD/MEd program. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Georgia with bachelor’s degrees in criminal justice and sociology and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in 2000.
