Michael Wells is in his second year as the Occidental College sports information director.

In July, 2012, Wells was promoted to assistant athletic director, adding the annual Roy Dennis Senior Scholar-Athlete Banquet, the Occidental College Athletics Hall of Fame, search committees and external relations under his umbrella. He will also play a limited role as an assistant with the men's basketball team.

Wells, 25, took over in August 2011 as the person charged with covering, writing and disseminating news and statistics for the liberal arts institution's 21 intercollegiate athletic teams, participating in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

Wells, whose mother Jodie Burton and father David Wells were longtime basketball coaches for Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, graduated from Dominican University of California with a bachelor of arts in communications in May 2011 and had been working as a sports reporter for the Marin Independent Journal in Northern California, where he covered college, prep and youth sports and designed pages, before arriving on campus in Eagle Rock.

In his first season at Oxy, Wells incorporated multimedia components into Oxy's athletic coverage, including highlight packages of sporting events and one-on-one interviews with athletes and coaches. He became the Chair of the SCIAC Sports Information Directors Committee less than one month after taking the job and served on the Occidental College Athletics Hall of Fame steering and voting committees. He hosted Oxy's annual Senior Scholar-Athlete Awards Banquet and served as an outside contractor for multimedia at the 2012 NCAA Division III Outdoor Track and Field National Championships.

Wells is a regular contributor to the Occidental College Alumni Magazine, writing feature stories on current and former Oxy athletes and coaches.

His college experience at Dominican was a well-rounded one.

As a four-year letter winner on the men's basketball team, Wells was named the Cal Pac Conference Freshman of the Year Award in 2007-08 and the Penguins' captain during his senior season in 2010-11.

Off of the court he wore several journalism and leadership hats.

He helped pioneer an effort to start ducnews.com, a student run news website, and served as the site's managing editor while holding a position as the managing editor for the campus newspaper, The Habit. He also hosted sports talk radio shows on the school's campus radio station, worked in Dominican's sports information office and broadcasted women's basketball, women's volleyball and men's and women's soccer games.

When the San Rafael university hosted one of the 2010 California Gubernatorial Debates, Wells worked for NBC Universal as an assistant to the executive producer.

Wells served as the chair of both the PacWest Conference and Dominican Student-Athlete Advisory Committees. In 2010, he led the Penguins student-athletes to a PacWest Conference Community Engagement Award after spearheading several successful fundraisers that rallied enthusiasm in the campus and Marin communities while raising money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Wells is an active member of College Sports Information Directors of America and the Society of Professional Journalists.

He lives in Burbank with his older brother John.