Isa Cruz

Over the summer, the Athletics Department named Mohamed Diawara as the inaugural Howard Vandersea Athletics Department Fellow. During the two-year position, Diawara will shadow athletics staff with a focus on administration and student-athlete well-being.

The Howard Vandersea Athletic Department fellowship program was established in 2024. The fellowship is named after former Bowdoin Head Coach Howard Vandersea, who led the football program in the 1980s and 1990s. Over his 15 years of coaching, Vandersea mentored hundreds of student-athletes and was passionate about guiding future leaders of athletics both at Bowdoin and beyond.

Diawara is excited to learn from leaders and members of all parts of the Athletics Department but, like Vandersea, is most excited to improve the student-athlete experience.

“For me, it’s advocating for athlete well-being,” Diawara said. “I think that is something that I really want to do is to continue to find ways for us to improve the student-athlete experience in all facets.”

Diawara is familiar with the NESCAC athletic experience, having graduated from Bates College in 2023, where he was a wide receiver on the football team, a member of the Bates Athletes of Color Coalition and a peer mentor for the Bobcat First-Generation Student Program. Off the field, Diawara majored in psychology with a concentration in law and society, racisms and religious studies.

“Playing football was amazing,” Diawara said. “Covid[-19] happened [during my] sophomore year, and in my junior year, we had a new head coach. That’s when I started thinking about administration, learning about the behind the scenes, because I was always involved with student-athletes at Bates.”

For his senior thesis, Diwara researched the psychological and emotional response to injury from the perspective of a student-athlete who dealt with a season-ending injury during his junior year at Bates.

“I was just curious to learn more about how to support student-athletes and just see people grow because I’ve gotten to see myself grow in ways that I never could imagine,” Diawara said.

With his interest sparked in pursuing a career in athletics, Diawara was accepted into the NCAA Student Immersion Program, which he participated in his senior year.

“[The program] was 40 Division III student-athletes across the country learning about college athletics, administration and the whole nine,” Diawara said.

This past winter, Diawara earned his master’s degree in public administration with a concentration in ethical leadership from Marist University. In his two years there, Diawara was a captain of the football team and worked in the Marist athletics department.

“I started working in their athletics department right after my first football season there. I started off helping them with business operations and that continued on for the rest of my time [at Marist].”

During his time at both Bates and Marist, Diawara was an active member of the Student Athletes of Color Coalition. In the upcoming months, he will be joining Bowdoin’s Athletes of Color Coalition (AoCC) to help plan events and guide student-athletes through their time at Bowdoin.

Upon completion of the fellowship, Diawara hopes to continue working in college athletics, using the skills and experience he gained from his time in Brunswick.

“I’m not sure [at] which institution, but I would hope to be an athletic director,” Diawara said. “Maybe not the highest athletic director… [maybe an] assistant athletic director, associate athletic director, something of that nature, but I could definitely see myself continuing the work and just climbing up the ranks.”