CAPE COD, Mass. – Former University of Maine men’s basketball head coach Rudy Keeling has been named Commissioner of the Eastern College Athletic Conference.

On May 1, Keeling will become the seventh head of the ECAC and the first African-American to assume the position. Most recently, he was the athletic director at Emerson College in Boston.

Keeling started coaching at UMaine in 1988. He guided the Black Bears until 1996, when he was named the head men’s basketball coach at Northeastern University in Boston.