Eyeing the present as well as the future, the Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee has developed several budget initiatives for 2000-01 and beyond in order to enhance opportunities for ethnic minorities in intercollegiate athletics.

Meeting February 23-25 in Monterey, California, the committee developed the list of initiatives on the heels of the NCAA Executive Committee designating about $1 million for Association-wide initiatives and what have been termed the NCAA president's priorities in 2000-01. The Executive Committee also set aside about $500,000 in unallocated funds.

The Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee developed initiatives totaling more than $740,000, and while recognizing that funding may not be available to cover all the initiatives in the 2000-01 budget cycle, the committee believes the initiatives deserve a measure of priority given that NCAA President Cedric W. Dempsey in his State-of-the-Association address to NCAA Convention delegates in January listed diversity in athletics opportunities as a primary concern.

The initiatives, which the committee prioritized as part of a long-range plan, comprise three types of development -- expanding current or creating new NCAA programs to enhance opportunities for ethnic minorities in athletics; public-relations, recruitment and training strategies to increase the pool of qualified minority candidates; and research initiatives designed to study ways to change the hiring culture in athletics.

Primary on the committee's list is a request to expand several existing programs that have proven to be successful in enhancing opportunities for ethnic minorities. The committee is asking to double the number of participants in the NCAA Fellows Leadership Development Pro -gram, which was created in 1994 in order to enhance employment and leadership opportunities for ethnic minorities and women at the senior management level of athletics administration. Currently, six fellows are selected annually. Last year's class included at least four who have been promoted to leadership positions within the Association, including three at the associate or athletics director level and one at the associate conference commissioner level. The cost of the expansion to 12 fellows would be about $150,000.

The committee also wants to increase the number of participants in the NCAA Ethnic Minority and Women's Enhancement program, which includes postgraduate scholarships awarded for students pursuing careers in intercollegiate athletics, and internships at the NCAA national office designed to develop candidates for leadership positions at NCAA schools and conferences. The committee asked to increase the number of postgraduate scholarships from 24 to 30 (15 women's enhancement scholarships and 15 ethnic minority enhancement scholarships) and the number of interns from nine to 14 annually. Costs for expanding both programs are projected to be about $136,000.

Aside from existing programs, the committee also studied the possibility of a new program modeled after the NACWAA/HERS program that would provide a leadership development curriculum for minority males looking to advance within athletics. Though in the formulative stages, the committee envisions a week-long "institute" that would help participants develop and enhance leadership skills.

Charles Whitcomb, faculty athletics representative at San Jose State University and chair of the committee, said participants could include coaches thinking about going into administration, assistant or associate athletics directors looking to advance to the director level, or perhaps a Division II or III athletics director looking to move to Division I.

"What a way to take those competencies that people believe are necessary to be successful in those positions right now and build them into a leadership institute like this," he said.

Whitcomb said the committee will spend some time and energy in developing this concept, but much depends on funding.

He also said that is an example of why the committee asked its long-range planning subcommittee to develop a five-year plan. That group's charge, Whitcomb said, will be to establish short-term priorities as well as maintain focus on long-term, ongoing types of enhancement efforts.

"We want to make sure the long-range plan is representative of the things we're looking at not only in terms of enhancement but also in terms of initiatives that came out of the NCAA Summit to Enhance Athletics Opportunities for Minority Women."

The committee spent some time discussing initiatives related to the summit, which was a joint venture with the Committee on Women's Athletics that included representatives from several major women's and minority athletics organizations. One of the committee's budget initiatives is to reconvene this group at a future date to monitor progress on partnering to establish new programs or enhance existing programs geared to develop upward movement for minority women in athletics.

Other business

Two other issues also highlighted the committee's meeting, including a review of the Division I basketball issues legislative package that is in the comment period now but is set to be in front of the Management Council and Board of Directors for action in April. The committee took particular interest in Proposal No. 99-123, which would allow schools to award financial aid to nonqualifiers, provided they did not practice or compete with the team that first year. The committee supported the proposal but recommended that the nonqualifiers, pending satisfactory academic progress, be allowed to regain a fourth year of eligibility.

The latter dovetails with the committee's ongoing belief that providing access to college is one of the committee's primary charges. The fourth-year-of-eligibility concept also is a committee concern in the current debate about initial-eligibility standards.

One of the other issues that generated a good deal of discussion during the meeting was the ongoing effort to diversify the pool of candidates for the Association's Woman of the Year award. The committee reviewed the candidate pool over the last few years and noted the lack of ethnic minority candidates.

The committee recognizes the difficulty in ensuring that all NCAA member schools nominate candidates, but a couple of ideas were discussed that the committee believes might diversify the candidate pool. One is to require schools that do submit candidates to submit two nominees, one of which must be an ethnic minority. The other is to study the possibility of "leveling" the selection criteria rather than weighting one area of achievement over another. The committee believes this might encourage a larger and more diverse candidate pool.

Whitcomb said the committee will request that the Committee on Women's Athletics consider these concerns.

Other highlights

Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee
February 23-25/Monterey, California

Reviewed the success of the diversity training efforts (both diversity training and the train-the-trainer component), and discussed the possibility of follow-up evaluations with trainers to gauge the impact of the training on individual campuses. Also noted that additional train-the-trainer sessions have been scheduled for June 24-26 in Seattle; July 9-11 in New York; July 26-28 in Charleston, South Carolina; and November 6-7 in Tampa, Florida.

Continued to review efforts to develop a survey to ascertain the number of ethnic minorities in officiating and how those officials are assigned within each conference.