Chad Cooper, who has two decades of athletics communications experience, was named Director of Athletic Communications at Saint Joseph's on November 20, 2024.
Cooper has prior Division I and Big 5 experience as the Director of Athletic Strategic Communications at Temple and as the Assistant Director of Athletics Communications at Drexel University, where he served as the primary contact for women's soccer, women's basketball, squash, and rowing. Prior to time at Drexel, he spent four years as the Director of Athletic Communications at Widener University, where he was responsible for the communications needs of 25 varsity sports, including the launch of four new sports. At Widener, he also worked to improve the video and publications for athletics, introducing multicamera web streams, while expanding the football program to a full color gameday magazine. Additionally, Widener's social media output increased with Twitter and Instagram gaining more than 30 percent year-over-year improvements in engagement.
From 2014-2017, Cooper served as the Assistant Director of Athletic Communications at the University of New Haven. There, he served as the primary media contact for several sports including overseeing media relations for the women's basketball team at the Elite Eight in 2015. He was also responsible for the enhancement of athletic department broadcasts, including multi-camera web broadcasts and enhanced graphics packages, culminating in the 2017 Northeast-10 Conference Baseball Championship. Prior to New Haven, Cooper worked in sports information at the collegiate level for Pace University and The College of Saint Rose.
Additionally, Cooper is involved in diversity and inclusion efforts at the local, conference, and NCAA levels. He has attended NCAA Common Ground IV and V and the NCAA Inclusion Forum, is a member of the CSC Diversity & Inclusion Committee, university LGBTQ+ committees, and co-led an initiative in the Middle Atlantic Conference to help move the MAC towards the use of gender inclusive language. He has also helped with DEI training for student-athletes. He has also been responsible for planning the CSC convention programming for the Diversity & Inclusion Committee for the last two years.
Before turning his focus to collegiate athletics on a full-time basis, Cooper spent 11 seasons as a minor league baseball broadcaster and media relations professional, working for the Evansville Otters, Traverse City Beach Bums, Windy City ThunderBolts, Vero Beach Devil Rays, and Pittsfield Colonials. In 2007, he made regular appearances on the Tampa Bay Devil Rays pregame show. During this time, he was named the Frontier League Broadcaster of the Year following the 2005 season with Evansville. He also broadcast college basketball and soccer, including nine NCAA Division II Regional Championships combined between the two sports.
A native of Elkins Park, Pa., Cooper, earned his bachelor's degree in secondary education from Temple and also owns a Master of Arts degree in Media and Communications from Pace University in 2015.
