Alison Quandt Westgate joined UMass Lowell in the fall of 2017 overseeing academics and student services. She has a passion for working with student-athletes to help them achieve their full potential as students, athletes and citizens of the greater community. Known across the department as ‘Q,’ she is charged with oversight of the academic success of student-athletes across all 16 sports as well as building the foundation for the Student-Athlete Development curriculum that includes the River Hawk Leadership Academy, Career and Financial Preparation, Community Service and Personal Development programming and services.
Quandt Westgate has spearheaded the River Hawk Degree Completion Program that has stewarded four former River Hawks to completion of their degree, in one case 35 years after the student-athlete exhausted their eligibility. She works extensively to support first generation students through the River Hawk Scholars Academy in addition to the International Students and Scholars Office.
Quandt Westgate was selected for the prestigious NCAA Pathway Program for the 2021-2022 cohort. The Pathway Program is a year-long program designed to elevate senior-level athletics administrators to the next step as directors of athletics or conference commissioners.
Prior to UMass Lowell, she spent a year and a half at Impact Performance Group LLC designing and facilitating sales, leadership and coaching development programs for organizations across a range of industries from banking to hospitality to construction. Before IPG, Quandt Westgate spent eight years as the Director and then Assistant Athletic Director of Student-Athlete Development at Boston College and oversaw the build-out of a holistic program to serve student-athletes in their leadership, career, personal and community service development. Highlights of her time on the Heights include, the creation of Xcel, a biannual summit for the captains of each team; an increase in senior student-athlete job/graduate school placement from 62% to 86% over a three year period; and the creation of an annual service trip to New Orleans, LA and rural Mississippi that brought 25 student-athletes together from a variety of sports to help rebuild homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. In addition, she coached the goaltenders on the women’s hockey team for nine years – a tenure that included seven trips to the Frozen Four, four Hockey East titles, three Beanpot titles and preparation of two backstops for the Olympic team (2010 & 2014), and a Silver Medal at the World Championships as an assistant with the U18 Women’s National Team in Budapest, Hungary. Quandt Westgate is a certified facilitator of the DiSC® Personality Assessment and facilitates Huddle Up, a leadership program that uses the power of sport to help end gender violence through the Institute for Sport and Social Justice. She also serves on the Advisory Board for Boston College’s Master of Sport Administration Program in the Woods College of Advancing Studies. A Boston College alumnae (BA Economics & General Education), Quandt Westgate spent the first three years of her professional career at PwC in the Risk Assurance Practice before returning the BC to complete her MBA with a Leadership concentration.
As a student-athlete she graduated with the then-BC career records for wins (28) and goals against average (2.83) and was tied for the most career shutouts (6). As a senior, she set the then-school record for lowest single-season goals against average (2.17). She received the Joe Bertagna Goaltender Award as the 2006 Beanpot Tournament's most outstanding goaltender. Quandt was named to the Hockey East All-Academic team three times and received the Athletic Director's Award for Academic Achievement four times. In 2015, Quandt was inducted into the Beanpot Hall of Fame. A four-year member of the women’s hockey team at BC, she currently lives in Lexington, Massachusetts with her husband, Ronnie, daughter, Natalie, and son, Peter.
