Lincoln University Athletics

Airis Thomas joined the Lincoln University (PA) staff as the Assistant Athletic Director for Communications and Marketing in August of 2026 and will oversee the publicity of all the Lions’ NCAA Division II athletic programs. She will also oversee all the marketing for the department.

Prior to Lincoln, Thomas was at Winston-Salem State University as the Public Communication Coordinator /Sports Information Director for five years. She overseen the publicity of all Rams NCAA Division II athletic programs and helped manage all the social media pages. Thomas helped cover seven Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) championship teams. She was passionate about making sure all her coaches and student athletes received all recognitions that their perspective organizations had to offer. During her tenure at WSSU, she also served as the secretary for the CIAA-SIDA E-board and served as the NCAA Division II Atlantic Region Representative for two years. Also during her time with the Rams, she participated in the College Sports Communicators Diversity and Inclusion program and successfully completed it in 2024.

Prior to WSSU, Thomas was at Coppin State for five months as the Assistant Director of Communications. She helped oversee the publicity of all Eagles NCAA Division I athletic programs. Her last two months with the Eagles she served as the interim Sports Information Director covering men and women’s basketball, as well as bowling and volleyball. She helped write feature stories for the website and assisted with the day-to-day operations in the department.

Thomas also assisted the local Maryland colleges such as Bowie State and Morgan State with doing statistics for volleyball and football, respectively. 

Prior to Coppin, she was a part of the Towson University athletic media relations staff as the media relations intern from 2018-2021. She served as the contact for women’s soccer, men and women’s swimming and diving, track and field, gymnastics, and softball. She was the official scorer for the men and women basketball programs and backup statistician for football.

In 2019, Thomas was one of six to earn the NCAA Inclusion College of Sports Information Directors (CoSIDA) grant. She was awarded the chance to attend the annual convention and visit the NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis.

Prior to Towson, she was at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES) as the department’s marketing and Game Day Coordinator for two years. She oversaw all the social media accounts for the athletic teams and coordinated all the game day activities for half time and media timeouts for men and women’s basketball. Two of her major events with the Hawks were the annual Take a Kid to the Game and organizing Hawk Hysteria during basketball season. She also worked with the Student Athletic Advisory Committee and made sure all the community service was publicized for the website.

Thomas also got to spend the 2016 and 2017 seasons working with the Delmarva Shorebirds, the Baltimore Orioles single-A minor league baseball team in Salisbury, Maryland. While working with the Shorebirds she got to entertain the fans by playing the music during the game as well as working the video board.  She also got to help with the different community service campaigns such as Brooke’s Toy Closet.

In 2014-2015, Thomas worked as a media relations staffer with the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) helping to prepare game notes and assist with conference tournaments. She helped produce the basketball tournament media guide and updated the year-end review. She worked on weekly bowling nominations and assisted with the program book for the indoor track meet. She assisted with the game notes for basketball and football and made sure the operations for volleyball, basketball, and baseball tournaments ran as smoothly as they could. She also sat in on the weekly football coaches' meeting and used an editing software program to cut clips for the website.

During her undergraduate years, Thomas was a 2012 summer Intern at Morgan State University where she was one of the writers for that upcoming season’s football media guide. She also helped write team bios and update team schedules for the website.

A graduate of UMES (kinesiology, ‘13) she also was the media relations and marketing intern for three years. She served as a liaison for officials as well as helped the staff with various day-to-day tasks in the office.

The Windsor Mills, Md., native was the past president of the Resident Hall Association at UMES and was the past secretary for the Hollarin' Hawks Pep Squad. In 2012, She was one of the founding members for the National Society of Leadership and Success and served as the past president. Thomas also served as the National Communications Coordinator for the Resident Hall Association. She served as the manager for the UMES baseball team for three seasons and as a mentor for the Big Brothers Big Sisters program.

Thomas is currently members of the College Sports Communicators (CSC), formerly known as College of Sports Information Directors (CoSIDA) and Black College Sports Information Directors’ Association (BC-SIDA) and sits on the CSC ‘Thank your SID’ committee and is a part of the mentor/mentee program.