Georgia State University on Wednesday named as its new athletic director Cheryl Levick, the former No. 2 at the University of Maryland and twice a former athletic director herself at Santa Clara University and St. Louis University.

Levick, whose first day will be March 30, takes over from football coach Bill Curry, who is doing the job on an interim basis. Georgia State's last permanent athletic director, Mary McElroy, was terminated without cause by outgoing president Carl Patton at the end of December.

That new university President Mark Becker, whose first day on the job was Jan. 2, moved with such speed would appear to indicate the importance Becker placed on having a replacement for McElroy with the fledgling football program needing to get off the ground for its first season in 2010. Curry said his feeling at the hiring was one of relief.

Becker said neither Levick's gender nor the time frame were factors, calling Levick "a perfect fit" and citing her record of "excellence." Becker said the final decision was made on Wednesday morning. Among her chief achievements, Becker said St. Louis University athletes maintained a grade-point average of 3.28 in 2006-07 when Levick was athletic director. Becker stressed academic achievement for athletes.He also noted Levick's overseeing of a $40 million capital campaign at Santa Clara to renovate the school's basketball arena.

Levick said those involved in the hiring process were trying to keep it under wraps. About a week ago, she had a cell phone conversation with Maryland football coach Ralph Friedgen, a longtime assistant at Georgia Tech, to inform him. Friedgen called around for her and then told her that, "This is legit. This might be a good opportunity."

At Maryland, Levick said she was intimately involved in the operations of the football program, a position that she said prepares her for Georgia State when it will come time to such tasks as negotiating a lease with the Georgia Dome and the construction of a new practice facility.

"Football needs to lead the train here," she said.

Levick said among her first priorities will be to talk to every coach and to get status updates from Curry on the state of the football program. She also mentioned studying the status of GSU's apparel contract and the need to find out "big things" about the department's budget.

Curry said he met Levick for the first time on Tuesday. Curry said he, men's basketball coach Rod Barnes and women's basketball coach Lea Henry had a scheduled one-hour meeting with Levick. He said administrators had to break up the meeting after it ran 30 minutes longer than scheduled.

"When I'm evaluating someone, I've learned about myself that I have one of two responses internally," Curry said. "I either want to get out of the room as fast as I can or the other response is 'How can we hire this person?' This is the person I want to be with in the foxhole."

Curry said he was impressed with Levick's understanding of business, planning and recruiting.

Levick's title at Maryland, where she was hired a little over two years ago, was chief of staff/executive senior athletic director. Prior to that, the St. Louis native and University of Missouri graduate was the athletic director at St. Louis University.

At St. Louis, she hired Rick Majerus, who took Utah to the NCAA finals in 1998, to be the school's basketball coach and led the school's transition from Conference USA to the Atlantic 10. She also worked at Stanford University from 1988 to 2000. In 2001, she was named Division I Athletic Administrator of the Year by the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletic Administrators and in 1998 and 1999 as one of the nation's top 25 female athletic executives by Sports Business Journal.