DePaul gives AD Ponsetto 5-year contract extension through 2016-17 academic year

DePaul has agreed to a five-year contract extension with athletic director Jean Lenti Ponsetto through the 2016-17 academic year.

Ponsetto has been on the job since July 2002 and has helped raise more than $13 million dollars and create more than 25 endowed scholarships.

The deal announced Tuesday comes at a time when the school is looking for a new home for the men's basketball team in the city. The Blue Demons play most of their home games at Allstate Arena in suburban Rosemont, Ill.

Spots near the school's Lincoln Park campus and downtown as well as the United Center are being looked at.

Ponsetto says DePaul is "not in position to rule out any facilities," although she doesn't think there's room to build an arena on campus. That would mean constructing one on the "outer edges" of Lincoln Park or looking downtown.

"We really don't have anything that's on our campus, per se, that could get us the footprint that we'd like to have," she said. "So my preference would be if we can't be on campus, I'd like to be somewhere downtown. I think we have over 120,000 alumni that are in the major metropolitan area so you'd like to have something that people could come to from work and have the same kind of excitement and energy that so many of our other Chicago teams have generated."