IESA Headlines

Julie Cochran Added to IESA Administrative Staff...

Craig Johnson to Provide Technology Assistance

June 19, 2001

Julie Cochran has been selected as an Assistant Executive Director for the Illinois Elementary School Association (IESA). She will begin her duties July 16. Her selection was approved by the IESA Board of Directors at their June 8 meeting. Cochran becomes the fourth person in the 72 year history of the IESA to be named to the position. She will fill the vacancy that was created when Brad Lucey resigned and current Assistant Executive Director Nicole Schaefbauer was promoted to the Associate Executive Director position.

Cochran is a native of Wooster, Ohio and graduated from The College Of Wooster in May, 1992 with a degree in communication. During her undergraduate years, she was a four-year varsity soccer team member and served as team captain. She received her M.S. in Sport Administration from Temple University in January, 1995. After graduating from Temple, she briefly worked in athletic marketing and promotions for the University of Louisville and assisted with the planning coordination of the 1995 Metro Conference Men's Basketball Tournament. In September, 1995, Julie joined the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics at Illinois State University where she served as Athletic Event Manager and Assistant Director of Redbird Arena. During that time she was the tournament manager for numerous Illinois High School Association girls basketball and girls volleyball state finals as well as several NCAA championships that were held in Redbird Arena and at ISU. She managed every aspect of ISU's home athletic events in 19 different varsity sports.

"I am extremely pleased to add Julie to our staff," said IESA Executive Director, Steve Endsley. "She brings tremendous event management skills to the Association, is very knowledgeable about state final tournament details because of her prior work with the IHSA, and is genuinely excited to start working with our member schools. She has a very comprehensive athletic administration background and coupled with her knowledge of music education, Julie will be an asset to the Association and to our 700 member schools."

Cochran will have administrative responsibilities for girls softball, girls volleyball, music, and scholastic bowl.

She and her husband, Dan reside in Normal.

In another personnel matter decided at the Board of Directors meeting, Craig Johnson, who serves as the webmaster for Digital Dakota and created the IESA web site, was approved to provide basic IESA web site maintenance, graphic design improvements, archiving of records, updating of web site data and dates, maintaining online record books, and implement a web marketing strategy to generate income from web site advertising. "IESA was Digital Dakota's first real client and securing Craig's services throughout the course of the school year will allow us to maximize our web site's usefulness to our member schools and the thousands of people who visit our site," said IESA Executive Director, Steve Endsley. " We had almost six million hits on our web site last year. People expect to be able to receive much needed information from the web site and Craig will continue to provide that service."