Wren Baker
Wren Baker
Wren Baker is a Vice President/Director of Athletics at the University of North Texas.[1]
Biography
Wren Baker was named the University of North Texas Vice President and Director of Athletics on July 29, 2016 and wasted no time making an impact on the Mean Green.
Baker has spearheaded one of college athletics’ most remarkable turnaround stories of the past decade.
Six Mean Green teams have combined to win eleven conference or division championships during Baker’s tenure.
The 2019-20 academic year saw the Mean Grean continuing its upward momentum before a global pandemic brought an abrupt halt to competition in early March.
UNT had already won women’s soccer and men’s basketball conference @championships and the spring sports teams were excelling in early season competition.
The men’s basketball conference championship was the program’s first-ever in Conference USA.
Experience
The 2018-19 academic year was historic for UNT with every Mean Green team achieving a winning season for the first time in school history.
UNT programs combined to post the highest overall winning percentage since 1978-79 when UNT only fielded four teams.
Mean Green teams won conference championships in women’s soccer, softball and men’s cross-country, building on the championships won in Volleyball, women’s soccer and football (west division) the previous year.
The men’s basketball program won 20 games for the second consecutive year after capturing the CBI championship under first-year coach Grant McCasland in 2017-18.
The football, men’s and women’s basketball teams all had winning seasons for a second consecutive season, marking the first two-year stretch of success in more than 40 years.
UNT has also reached new heights in the Classroom under Baker’s leadership, posting four consecutive department Graduation Success Rate (GSR) records. For the first time ever, all 14 teams recorded a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher in 2019-20 which bested the previous record of eleven teams set in 2016-17 and again in 2017-18.[3]
Baker is a noted fundraiser and has led record fundraising years at four different universities.
During his tenure, UNT athletics has registered the four best fundraising years in its history while securing 12 of the 20 largest gifts in athletic department history.
In 2017-18 UNT athletics set a school record for fundraising, nearly doubling the previous department record.
The banner year culminated with the announcement of the two largest gifts ever received by UNT athletics.[2]