This year's Faculty Athletics Representatives Association's (FARA) Fall Forum will focus on ways to enhance the faculty's role in intercollegiate athletics, as well as ways that faculty might address issues raised in the most recent Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics report.

The annual forum, scheduled this year for November 15-17 in San Diego, will offer panel discussions to review the Knight Commission's latest report, which challenges the NCAA to curtail commercialism in big-time sports and encourages institutions to refocus their athletics programs on the educational mission.

The report's release in June has generated debate about whether some of the suggested reforms would be practical or effective. Athletics and higher education governance groups also have disagreed about who is best equipped to carry out such reform.

Faculty athletics representatives already have made it clear that they want to be involved, and the FARA Fall Forum figures to be an appropriate starting point.

"We hope that after hearing the debate during the panel discussions to talk about specific actions that faculty athletics representatives can take," said Diane Husic, FARA president and faculty athletics representative at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania. "In many ways, we believe that faculty members are in a better position than college presidents to administer any reform efforts."

Panel discussions will include NCAA President Cedric W. Dempsey, who was a member of the Commission, and Percy Bates, faculty athletics representative at the University of Michigan who testified before the Commission last spring. FARA also is soliciting an additional Knight Commission representative and a college president to participate on the panels.

Husic said the discussions also will address the theme of the public perception of intercollegiate athletics.

"We'd like to come out with specific actions that we can take at all levels, including message points that we can emphasize on campuses with faculty senates and athletics boards, things that can be done at the conference level, and projects that FARA can do at the national level to enhance that perception," she said.

In addition to those discussions, other topics at the Fall Forum include professional development for faculty athletics representatives and time demands placed on student-athletes. Another session also will explore the amount of power vested at the conference level in the NCAA's federated governance structure. That session is intended to provide a forum that may enhance faculty communication at the conference level, particularly in Division I.

Division break-out sessions also are on the agenda, which will allow for discussions on topical matters such as financial aid and amateurism deregulation in Division I, deregulation of Bylaws 17 and 14 in Division II and the proposed financial aid audit process in Division III.