National Collegiate Athletic Association

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The NCAA News -- September 28, 1998

Division II -- Committee receives training in learning-disability issues

The Division II Academic Requirements Committee devoted most of its recent meeting to developing a better understanding of learning-disability issues as they apply to initial and continuing eligibility.

The committee, which met September 10-11 in New Orleans, spent all of its second day meeting with Dan Sutherland, a trial attorney from the United States Department of Justice; Darryl Mellard, a senior researcher from the University of Kansas; and with the NCAA learning-disabilities staff.

The NCAA and the Department of Justice entered into a consent decree in May (a complete copy of the decree appeared in the July 20 issue of The NCAA News). In the decree the Association and the Justice Department outlined a series of agreements designed to make certain that learning-disabled students are accommodated in the initial- and continuing-eligibility processes.

"It was a training session designed for the members of the Academic Requirements Committee who are involved in initial- and continuing-eligibility waiver requests," said Philip D. Grayson, an NCAA membership services representative who serves as the Association's Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator. "There was specific training about what is required by the consent decree."

Grayson said that the session involved using eight criteria that were included in the consent decree. Instruction was provided on how to evaluate a waiver request and how to weight the criteria appropriately.

During the rest of its meeting, the committee addressed several other issues relating to Division II academics.

Perhaps most significantly, the committee agreed that it will seek within the next two months to re-establish a dialogue with the junior college community, especially with regard to transfer regulations involving student-athletes from two-year colleges.

In the previous structure, Division II relied on the NCAA Two-Year College Relations Committee, an Association-wide body, to address junior college transfer matters. However, no such group exists in the new structure, bringing about the need for representatives from the Academic Requirements Committee to recreate lines of communication with two-year college governing bodies to make certain that transfer regulations and academic requirements for student-athletes from two-year colleges are appropriate.

The committee will contact the National Junior College Athletic Association, the Community Collegiate League of California, and the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers in order to reopen a dialogue.

In other business at its recent meeting, the Division II Academic Requirements Committee:

  • Continued its ongoing review of the impact of Division II initial-eligibility standards.

  • Based on a recommendation from the NCAA Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse Committee, recommended to the Division II Management Council that the NCAA Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse be permit-ted to use grade information ob-tained through the International Baccalaureate World Wide Web site, rather than requiring provision of a hard copy of the International Baccalaureate Certificate.

  • Chose not to support 1999 Convention Proposal Nos. 1-3 and 1-4, which deal with two-year transfers who were partial qualifiers or nonqualifiers and the one-time transfer exception, respectively.