Nicole Hager

Title

Deputy Director of Athletics / SWA
Email

nhage01s@uis.edu
Phone

217-206-8570

Nicole Hager was promoted to Deputy Director of Athletics at Illinois Springfield in 2025. In this expanded leadership role, she continues to serve as the department’s Senior Woman Administrator (SWA) while overseeing academic advising for undergraduate student-athletes, with a particular focus on supporting first- and second-year students. She also serves as the primary athletics liaison to key campus partners that enhance the student-athlete experience. She provides strategic leadership, especially in compliance services, sport management and licensing opportunities.

As the UIS SWA, she represents the Prairie Stars at Great Lakes Valley Conference administrative meetings. In addition, she is a member of the GLVC Budget and Finance Committee and serves as the AD/SWA liaison for men's and women's tennis. She served as the tournament manager for the 2025 GLVC men's and women's tennis championships, which UIS hosted in Springfield and Rochester.

Well respected on the UIS campus, Hager was recognized as the Chancellor's Academic Professional Excellence (CAPE) Award winner in 2025, acknowledging her dedication, exceptional service and significant contributions. In 2024, Hager was the Orion Award winner, presented to a non-faculty member who demonstrates a strong focus on student success, the student experience, customer service and embodying a student-first mentality.

Hager rejoined UIS Athletics in 2024 as the Senior Associate Athletic Director for Academics and Compliance, marking her return to the Prairie Stars after previously building and leading student-athlete academic support services from 2014 to 2021. During that time, she developed advising programs, academic support initiatives, and retention strategies for 17 NCAA Division II sports.

From 2021–24, Hager worked in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences as Program Coordinator and Advisor for English, History, and Liberal Studies. She also served as Interim Program Coordinator and Advisor for Criminology & Criminal Justice, Sociology/Anthropology, and for the African American Studies and Women & Gender Studies minors. Additionally, she has served as Coordinator of the First-Year Seminar since 2021.

Before her career at UIS, Hager spent 11 years as a professor on the Robert Morris University Springfield campus, gaining extensive experience in student success initiatives, honors program advising, teaching, assessment, and co-curricular development.

Hager holds both a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in English from the University of Illinois Springfield and completed Ph.D. work in American Literature at St. Louis University.

She is a member of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) and the National Association of Academic and Student-Athlete Development Professionsl (N4A).

Hager lives in Springfield with her husband, Peter Sheehan, and their daughter, Caroline, who is a soccer student-athlete at Vassar.