Ken Johnson, Jr. Is one of the recipients of this year's EAST-COMM Irving T. Marsh Award.  Johnson most recently served as the Director of Communications, Marketing and Promotions at MIT.  Johnson is receiving the award posthumously as he passed away in February, 2024 at the age of 47.


The Irving T. Marsh Award is considered one of the highest honors EAST-COMM bestows. It is given annually to one or two members who, in the opinion of the membership and Executive Board, has exhibited excellence in the field of athletic communications. The awards are presented annually at the spring workshop. First presented in 1966, the awards are named after Irving T. Marsh, the ECAC Service Bureau founder and director until his retirement in 1973.
Johnson, a native of Dennis, Mass., was in his 26th year in the profession and his eighth year at MIT at the time of his passing. Johnson served as the First Vice-President of EAST-COMM and was in his second year of a four-year term on the EAST-COMM Executive Board. In June, 2023, he received a College Sports Communicators award for 25 years of service in the athletic communications field, and recently received the organization's Lifetime Achievement Award.



In 2019, he was the recipient of the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) Excellence in Communications Award for NCAA Division III Track and Field. In addition, Johnson was elected to the D3SIDA Board of Directors in the summer of 2019 and served as the Region 1 representative from 2019-2021. In that role, he was also a member of the D3SIDA Divisional Cabinet within the College Sports Communicators governance.




Prior to his arrival at MIT, Johnson served as the Assistant Director of Athletics for Communications at Assumption University for five years. He was previously the Sports Information Director at Manhattanville College, the University of Bridgeport, and Saint Anselm College and began his career as an intern at Brown University.
While Ken's resume speaks for itself, his impact on college athletics and the athletic communications profession goes far beyond his accomplishments.  Well-respected throughout the industry, Johnson left behind a legacy of mentorship to those he worked with as well as others and he impacted many throughout his career.



"He was one of those really great people that you can learn a lot from," said Lauren Dellipoali, the Assistant Director of Athletic Communications at MIT who was hired by Johnson in 2021.  "You kind of have some people who've been doing this job for a while who tend to get stuck in their ways and don't really want to adapt, but Ken was really someone who was willing to change and was willing to do things differently based upon what kinds of things of the student athletes were interested in."



"One of the things he did was really empower the staff around him to do what they enjoy to do and to have a voice. He would always bring me into his office and ask for my opinion and I would kind of look at him like, "You've been doing this for 25 years, I've been doing it for five, why do you care what I think?" but I think he would always do those things because he wanted to empower the next generation to be able to continue in the field and make it better. I think that's one of the things he should really be remembered for is just what he did for the newer people, the younger people in the profession and how he wanted them to learn how to do the job well, but also give them a voice." That mentorship extended not only to assistants and others in the profession, but student staff as well.



"Ken was one of the first people to make Saint A's feel like home to me," said Joe Gill, a 2013 graduate of Saint Anselm who worked as an undergraduate in the Hawks' sports information office.  "At the time you don't realize, you think you're just going to a work study job and you don't realize the life lessons that you're picking up from there. I learned a lot from Ken as a student, but more importantly, I kept a lot of those lessons as I lead my own teams in work nowadays."
"There's a scene in The Office that says you wish you knew that it was the good old days when you're in them and although we were robbed of time with more time with Ken the the time we got to spend with him was just so special and the tools he gave us, but more importantly, the friendship he gave us over the years. It's so rare in life to get a mentor who just truly cares about you as a person. The work was always secondary, he obviously wanted to do a good job, but at the end of the day, he knew you and cared about you as a person."



In a 2023 story celebrating his 25-year award from College Sports Communicators, Johnson said "Most important to me? To leave things better than we found it."  
It's safe to say that not only did Ken leave each of his stops a better place, but had an impact on those around him and the profession as a whole, leaving it better than he found it.