Student-athletes are integrally involved in all of the 10 programs at NCAA institutions selected this year to receive CHOICES program grants.

The grants, totaling nearly $300,000, bring to 97 the number of grants awarded since the CHOICES program began in 1991.

Approximately $1.7 million has been awarded to institutions since then.

This is the third year that grants have been extended on a three-year basis. The maximum amount of the grant awards decreases from $15,000 the first year to $10,000 the second year and $5,000 the third year. The approach is designed to encourage the institution to assume greater responsibility for maintaining the program.

The CHOICES program seeks to encourage NCAA institutions and conferences to implement and evaluate effective alcohol-education programs. Funded programs are designed to work toward the elimination of high-risk consumption of alcohol on college campuses by promoting low-risk choices.

The use of alcohol by college students who are under the legal drinking age and the heavy use of alcohol by students for whom alcohol is a legal substance continue to be of concern to program administrators.

The NCAA Foundation awards CHOICES grants with support from Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc. The NCAA education services group is responsible for administration of CHOICES. All of the 10 newly funded programs feature peer-education components in which student-athletes and other students receive training to lead teammates and classmates in discussions promoting alcohol education.

Many of the programs also feature such elements as media campaigns, community outreach and events offering alternatives to alcohol use. All of the programs have characteristics that have been common in CHOICES. They are campus-wide in focus and are built around athletics events, activities and/or personalities. All also emphasize, in some way, the choices students must make about alcohol use.

Recipients of the latest CHOICES grants (and the amounts of the grants) are Alfred University ($28,684); the University of Arizona ($29,794); Augustana College (South Dakota) ($26,530); the University of California, Riverside ($29,250); Chatham College ($30,800); Kent State University ($30,000); Longwood College ($29,890); Macalester College ($29,710); the University of Maryland, Baltimore County ($21,000); and Purdue University ($29,752).

Application forms for CHOICES grants to be awarded in 2001 will be mailed to member institutions in October. The forms and grant guidelines will be sent to athletics directors, chief executive officers and directors of student affairs. The deadline for applications will be in February 2001. The 10 newly funded CHOICES programs are described on pages 8 and 9.

Making CHOICES Reducing Chances

Alfred University

This program will advance Alfred's comprehensive education program with emphasis on peer education and primary prevention among student-athletes at athletics events. The project is composed of three components: education; awareness; and social alternatives to drinking, partying and binge-drinking that often accompany college sports cultures and events.

Goals of the initiative are to integrate student-athletes and the athletics department into all aspects of the school's alcohol and drug-use education program; increase awareness of the hazards of binge drinking among student-athletes and the entire student body; and to encourage alternatives to drinking and binge-drinking behaviors that will translate into safe, healthy lifestyle choices.

Representatives from each athletics team will be recruited as peer educators and integrated into the existing peer-education program. They also will assist in publicizing and marketing alternative, nonalcohol programming.

Leading CHOICES

University of Arizona

Arizona's program proposes to implement an alcohol education and prevention model that will transform the student-athlete culture through social influence and environmental management. The project aims to create an environment that supports and encourages personal choices that are legal, appropriate and safe.

Goals of the project are to challenge the commonly held beliefs that most student-athletes drink heavily and cause harm to themselves and others; increase the effectiveness of campus alcohol policies and enforcement relative to student-athletes; and target student-athlete campus and community events, associated in the past with unsafe drinking practices, for creating and providing environments that encourage responsible and safe choices.

A major emphasis of the project will be to change student misperceptions about alcohol use. Studies have found that if students perceive something to be the norm, they tend to alter their behavior to fit that norm, even if it is not realistic. If, however, they are presented with the actual norm, they will conform to it. Therefore, if students think heavy drinking is normal, they will drink more. If they think responsible drinking is normal, they will drink more responsibly.

Positive CHOICES

Augustana College (South Dakota)

Positive Choices is an alcohol education and leadership program designed to encourage students to make positive choices relative to alcohol use that will keep them safe, healthy, and able to perform at a high level in the classroom and in the athletics arena.

The first year of the program focuses on training student-athletes to be team leaders in developing "athlete-only" standards for alcohol use. Year two of the grant will empower trained student-athletes to bring the program to the overall student body through student leaders and develop "challenge guidelines" for alcohol use. In the grant's final year and into subsequent years, both trained student-athletes and other student leaders will provide training to new and emerging leaders in student organizations and on athletics teams.

The program ultimately will emphasize student-athletes as leaders and role models on campus and in the local community who espouse responsible decision-making in areas like sportsmanship, citizenship and wellness with regard to alcohol use.

Winning CHOICES

University of California, Riverside

UC Riverside's program addresses alcohol education on three levels, including changing students' attitudes and perceptions about alcohol use on campus, changing student behaviors regarding alcohol use and creating an environment that supports making healthy choices regarding alcohol use.

The program will emphasize a social norm marketing approach, which can help change the perceptions and behaviors of a target audience. For example, students typically tend to overestimate how much other students use alcohol. By publicizing that misperception, and reporting the actual facts, the misperception is exploited and both perception and actual behavior are reduced over time.

Winning Choices also will take advantage of an already strong peer education program at UC Riverside. The school's student-athlete mentors, and fraternity and sorority peer health educators will be used to carry the Winning Choices message. By training those peer educators within the Winning Choices model, UC Riverside hopes to establish a large nucleus of students connected to various populations within the campus community that will effectively impact a significant number of people.

CHOICES and Consequences

Chatham College

Chatham's Choices program is an educational initiative designed to provide students with the appropriate life skills to make good choices, an understanding of the consequences of bad choices, and the opportunity to choose a range of social options that promote a healthy lifestyle.

The program will focus on self-esteem as an impact tactic. Enhancing self-esteem is a developmental task that is basic to any student's well-being. Achieving competence also is another task the program aims to develop.

The activities of the Choices and Consequences program will be geared toward that development of self-esteem that in turn will result in a more positive self image and a decreased need for addictive responses.

Building skills, nurturing self-esteem and fostering community support are three approaches integral to the program's success.

The program will employ a mixture of student leaders and administrators involved in existing student-service programs.

Interventions to Influence CHOICES

Kent State University

As with several other CHOICES programs, Kent State's approach is to address misperceptions regarding alcohol use as a way to modify behavior. School surveys of student-athlete and nonstudent-athlete populations found a perceived prevalence of heavy drinking among both groups. The studies indicate that more than 90 percent of both groups overestimate the amount of alcohol use by the "typical student."

Thus, even though rates of alcohol use are relatively high at Kent State, a large majority of the school's students perceive the norm for those behaviors to be even greater, which indicates that many students rely on this exaggerated or mistaken norm to make personal choices about drinking.

The program's goal then is to correct those misperception of campus drinking norms among the general student body. The program features two "arms," one that implements coaches as "norm setters," who describe through campus media the real norms at Kent State, and another aimed at assisting student-athletes with developing healthy drinking norms for their teams.

New CHOICES for Alcohol-Free Activities

Longwood College

A 1999 study conducted at the college indicated that more than 55 percent of students engaged in some form of binge drinking. And the college's 1998-99 judicial report indicated that alcohol-related incidents were the cause of most disciplinary actions handled at the school. The study also indicated that freshmen accounted for nearly half of the students found responsible in the alcohol-related incidents, and that 73 percent of students who consumed alcohol on campus were underage.

In New Choices for Alcohol-Free Activities, Longwood will focus on changing the school's social climate through education and participation at athletics events and alcohol-free activities.

Objectives of the program include increasing awareness about the effects of alcohol on academic and athletics performance, increasing student involvement in extracurricular alternatives at athletics events and educating students about making healthy choices through participation in alcohol-free activities.

Body/Spirit CHOICES

Macalester College

Macalester also will use social norming in its attempt to challenge student perceptions about alcohol use.

The Body/Spirit Choice program is designed to create a collaborative environment between the athletics department and the health services department by offering opportunities for stakeholders in both groups to work together and share resources.

The program aims to use social norming and the power of student-athletes as peers to change misperceptions about alcohol use at Macalester before new students arrive on campus.

Student-athletes will be an integral part of the program's development and implementation. The program will feature a social norming poster series as well as an alcohol education series that will be implemented in the third year of the program. At that time, the program will be evaluated to determine whether the educational components created change in resource usage, in misperceptions of alcohol abuse and in decreased risky alcohol use behaviors.

Influencing CHOICES

University of Maryland, Baltimore County

The goal of Influencing Choices is to reduce the overall incidence of binge drinking in both the general student population and among student-athletes.

Objectives of the UMBC program include (1) decreasing the discrepancy between a person's attitude and his or her perception of the campus norm regarding drinking and (2) decreasing the occurrence of heavy episodic drinking on campus.

UMBC plans an assessment of general student and student-athlete populations regarding the level of alcohol use among both groups. The school anticipates that the results of the assessment will continue to reflect a discrepancy between actual and perceived use of alcohol. The data will then be used to develop social norm messages (for example, "two out of every three UMBC students do not drink every week") that will be disseminated in a campus-wide media campaign.

The second year of the program will target student-athletes in a similar effort.

Your COICE

Purdue University

Purdue's program combines efforts from the athletics department and the student wellness office to use multiple prevention strategies campus-wide to create awareness and educate students about the illegal use and misuse of alcohol.

Student leaders, including student-athletes, will play a large role in developing and implementing the Your Choice program. Student leaders and student-athletes are role models on campus, and using them in the program's implementation phase will suggest credibility and legitimacy for the program to other students.

The program will use the following prevention strategies to create awareness and educate students: (1) a media campaign will use student-athletes and other student leaders to develop and implement messages that will be placed on bookmarks, posters, and in a video; (2) alternative activities, developed and sponsored by student-athletes and other student leaders, will present safe alternatives to drinking and promote campaign messages; and (3) an interactive peer theater program to help create awareness of the dangers of alcohol abuse.