Dr. Amber Burdge enters her sixth year as the assistant athletic director for academics.

Dr. Burdge has piloted the Bulldogs and Lady Techsters to exponential academic improvement during her time at the helm of the program. As Assistant AD, she has seen the Bulldogs and Lady Techsters achieve an 11% increase in total GPA (2.75 – 3.06). Comparing Dr. Burdge’s 1^st year to her 6^th: the amount of teams on campus with at least a 3.0 GPA has grown 150% (4 – 10), the amount of students named to the C-USA Commissioner’s Honor Role has increased by 26% (160 – 200), and the amount of athletes awarded the C-USA academic medal has doubled (27 - 54).

Besides assisting student athletes to superior academic success, she has also helped athletes give back. The athletic department has worked to donate over 3,200 books to local elementary schools in the Ruston community and consistently completed over 1,000 hours of community service each year.

Burdge also serves as the SAAC advisor, and they established the Loyal Blue Boxes, a program that has donated over 70 care packages to local patients diagnosed with cancer.  She was recently named an Aspire IChange Fellow and serves on the University of Louisiana System Black Male Advisory Council.
            
Prior to her time in Ruston, Dr. Burdge saw unprecedented success in various roles on numerous other campuses around the country. Dr. Burdge has served as the athletic director for Neosho Community College where she oversaw 16 sports programs who won six national titles and produced 36 NJCAA all American accolades and honors.

Previously, she has also worked as a director of student services for Stephen F. Austin and assistant athletic director for academics at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. While in Corpus Christi, she helped increase the number of Islander athletes on the Southland Conference Commissioner's Academic Honor Roll from 12 to 58 from fall 2006 to spring 2007.

Additionally, Dr. Burdge also served at Cleveland State University and Oklahoma State University.  

Burdge completed her bachelor of science in health from Oklahoma State in 2000 as well as her master of science in counseling and student personnel in 2004.