Prior to the 2017-18 season, Jonathan Mays comes to Illinois Wesleyan from the University of Kansas where he served as the Director of Student-Athlete Development.
Mays’ primary responsibilities included individualized leadership development for student-athletes.
Mays received his doctorate from the KU School of Education. His research centered on the topic of organizational culture and leadership within collegiate athletic teams and his dissertation was “From boys to men: An interpretive ethnography of college football.”Â
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Mays earned a bachelor's degree from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., where he was team captain for both basketball and golf and was an all-Midwest Conference basketball player as a senior guard in 2011. Mays won the school's Charles E. Pond Award for Men, given for all-around athletic ability by a senior man in two or more sports and for sportsmanship, school spirit and scholarship and he led the Vikings to two conference championships and two NCAA Division III tournament appearances.
Upon graduation  in 2011 he served as an assistant men’s basketball coach at Lawrence before pursuing his advanced degrees at Kansas.
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Mays lives in Bloomington, Ill., with his wife, Alicia, who is the director of football operations at Division I Illinois State University.
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