April 20, 2010

DEKALB, Ill. - Northern Illinois University deputy athletics director Robert Collins was honored by NIU's Presidential Commission on the Status of Minorities as one of the recipients of the 2010 Deacon Davis Diversity Award at the 11th Annual "Friendships Abloom" Spring Luncheon today.

Created in 2004, the Deacon Davis Award recognizes NIU students, faculty academic units, offices, programs or organizations for significant contributions made to improve the status of minorities on the NIU campus. Collins is one of three NIU staff members to receive this year's award and the second member of the NIU athletics department to be honored by the PCSM as associate athletics director Monique Bernoudy was one of the inaugural award winners.

Collins has dedicated 21 years to Northern Illinois University during two separate stints. Responsible for the oversight of the day-to-day operations of football, men's basketball and softball as well as the welfare of NIU student-athletes, he served as an assistant basketball coach at NIU from 1986-89 before returning to NIU in 1992 as an associate athletic director.

Selected as the Senior Associate Athletic Director of the Year by the All-American Football Foundation in 2006, Collins has an extensive teaching background as he spent 15 years in the Chicago Board of Education as a physical education teacher and coach at Calumet High School (1977-79) and Robeson High School (1980-86). Collins was named the 1984 District 2 Coach of the Year and was later inducted into the Chicago Public School Basketball Hall of Fame in 2003.

A 1971 graduate of Tennessee State University, Collins received his master's degree from National-Louis University in 1984. He is married to the former Kitty Sanders and has three children, Dori, Paige and Bobby.

-NIU-