Eastern athletic director Tom Michael is leaving EIU to become the deputy athletic director for the University of Illinois, effective May 14 according to Illinois’s press release.

Michael was a former student-athlete at Illinois from 1991 through 1994 and served as the senior associate athletic director prior to his appointment as head athletic director at EIU in 2014. He has been Eastern’s athletic director for 12 years and was the longest tenured athletic director in the Ohio Valley Conference.

Eastern President Jay Gatrell has appointed Dr. Austin Cheney to serve as acting director, according to a press release by EIU athletics.

Cheney, who is the Dean of the Lumpkin College of Business and Technology, will chair a national search for a new athletic director later this month, per the release.

Michael takes over for Roger Denney as deputy athletic director following Denney’s departure in January to become the head athletics director at the University of Oklahoma.

According to the U of I release, Michael served on the Football Championship Subdivision’s Football Oversight Committee and was part of the FCS Playoff Selection Committee from 2021 through 2024. Michael also served on the Division I Decision-making Working Group in 2025, which was a group that helped develop a reformed governance structure following the result of the NCAA v. House Settlement.

Any more information will be released as it’s made available.