It's an idea with Division III roots that could sprout practically anywhere it's planted.

The Snell Symposium is a project that was designed to increase the number of women coaches. The symposium recently graduated its third class of young women, and now the task is to spread the idea around and hope it germinates.

The seed was first planted when Jenepher Shillingford found empirical evidence demonstrating a problem. Now the athletics director emeritus at Bryn Mawr College, Shillingford has been concerned about the lack of women in coaching for years. A prominent study on the matter, "Women in Intercollegiate Sport," by R. Vivian Acosta and Linda Jean Carpenter, showed that the numbers of women in coaching had declined tremendously since the passage of Title IX in 1972.

This longitudinal study has tracked participation opportunities for women athletes and also the status of women as coaches and administrators on the college level since 1977.

According to the 2000 version of the study, more than 90 percent of college women's coaches were female in 1972, but the percentage has declined steadily since, hitting an all-time low of 45.6 percent in 2000. Eighty percent of the coaching jobs for women's teams have been filled by males since 1998, while the percentage of women coaching men's teams has remained constant since 1972 at less than 2 percent.

Also in 2000, only 17.8 percent of women's programs were directed by females.

Shillingford thought those numbers meant that female student-athletes, while perhaps gaining new teams and new participation opportunities thanks to Title IX, were also losing something important -- role models.

"I think it's important for girls and women to see women as coaches -- at the youth level, in college and everywhere in between," she said, noting that girls need to know they also can grow up to be coaches. "Sometimes you don't know that something is an option for you if you look around and don't see anyone who's like you."

Another issue is that women don't necessarily enter coaching through the same doors as they did years ago.

"When I went to Ursinus College, I learned to coach everything and teach everything, and the model was a physical educator who could coach," said Shillingford, who coached field hockey at Bryn Mawr until her retirement. She also coached basketball at Immaculata College.

"That's really not where most of our coaches come from now. A lot of young people who don't have a background in physical education are going into coaching, so the mentoring aspect becomes really important."

So Shillingford has tried to do her part over the years to encourage more women to enter the field. She also did what she could while she served as the president of the United States Field Hockey Association, a post she held from 1993 to 2000. But in 1999, when Shillingford retired from Bryn Mawr, she wrote a proposal to her alma mater to try to do more.

She proposed the Snell Symposium, which would consist of an in-person event, projects done by the participants and also a mentoring program. Ursinus agreed, and the Snell Symposium was launched with the support of Ursinus and the Centennial Conference in 2000.

Shillingford became the Snell Chair in physical education at Ursinus. Her chair and the symposium are named after Shillingford's former field hockey coach and mentor at Ursinus, Eleanor Frost Snell.

The first year, two student-athlete participants attended from each of the 11 full-member Centennial Conference schools. The keynote speaker was Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women's Sports Foundation.

By all accounts the first symposium was a success, but just how big a success wasn't apparent until this year.

Producing results

The 2002 symposium, again held at Ursinus in January, marked the third time the event was presented, and it also celebrated a small victory. Since it began, the Snell Symposium has been successful in sending half of its participants into the coaching field in some capacity.

That's an incredible figure, according to Christine Grant, the former women's athletics director at the University of Iowa and a speaker at each of the three symposia. A frequent speaker on gender-equity issues and one who has closely monitored the decline of women's coaches, Grant noted that the Snell Symposium has produced remarkable results.

"The general public may not realize that (50 percent of attendees becoming coaches) is phenomenal success," Grant said. "These women were only considering coaching. To have a success rate of 50 percent is beyond my wildest dreams."

Shillingford credits much of that success rate to the speakers, who have included Grant; Charlotte West, the now-retired senior women's athletics director and senior woman administrator at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and Bridget Belgiovine, NCAA assistant chief of staff for Division III and former athletics director at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse.

Other presenters have included athletics administrators and coaches from the institutions in the Centennial Conference. Typically, at least one administrator from each institution in the conference attends as a "mentor," and that person also may have a presentation assignment.

Topics have included the history of women in athletics, leadership skills, Title IX and gender equity, team building, ethics in coaching, entering athletics administration, and the benefits of involvement in athletics -- from the institutional level to conferences and national organizations.

"I think the presenters have been key," Shillingford said. "The keynoters make the whole program. These are individuals who possess a tremendous amount of knowledge and background in athletics, and they do a great job."

Erin Fitzgerald, a senior all-American lacrosse student-athlete at Ursinus and a participant in the Snell Symposium this year, found the speakers particularly motivating.

"The most inspiring thing for me was listening to people like Jen Shillingford, Charlotte West and Christine Grant, who have spent their entire lives working hard to give me the opportunities I have always taken for granted." Fitzgerald said. "I'm definitely encouraged to donate my time and effort to continuing the fight and making sure that my daughters and granddaughters have even more opportunities than I have.

"I've always wanted to coach, but now I further understand the importance of having female mentors and role models for young female athletes. I can't wait to get started."

Faith Shearer, associate athletics director and senior woman administrator at Johns Hopkins University, was a presenter at the symposium in 2002 and 2001. This year her topic was "Entering Athletics Administration."

Shearer believes the symposium addresses a need for information that young women haven't been getting.

"It's such a terrific experience. Students walk away with so much new knowledge and a greater appreciation of what their coaches do every day," Shearer said. "A lot of people don't think about coaching as a part of their future. And the career development office might have a little information, but the symposium really fills a vacuum in that regard."

The work of the symposium doesn't end after the weekend at Ursinus. The program also includes a mentoring program, as well as projects directed by the symposium participants.

"I've asked every student to follow through with some sort of symposium or project of their choice on their own campus that would further women's athletics," Shillingford said. Projects have ranged from PowerPoint programs to presentations to youngsters in schools and also activities marking National Women and Girls in Sport Day.

Amber Adamson, a former Swarthmore student-athlete and a past Snell Symposium participant, found the mentoring aspect beneficial. "Having great mentors really helps you," said Adamson, now an assistant lacrosse and field hockey coach at Bryn Mawr.

"We know we're not going to make a coach in a weekend," Shillingford said. "But in a weekend we can plant the seed that coaching is a good and honorable profession."

Shearer also notes that the symposium reaches people who might not otherwise be inclined to consider coaching.

"Especially for us in Division III, some of our positions are part time," she said. "We do have jobs available in Division III, and it can be a great place for people to get started. We also have faculty who coach, so if someone really wants to be a history professor and also coach the sport they love, there's that option."

Shillingford notes that one of her former students at Bryn Mawr is a geologist who also is an assistant swimming coach on the college level.

Shillingford and Shearer also point out that establishing more women coaches at all levels is a goal.

"Ultimately, we need women coaches in every aspect of athletics. The symposium opens up the participants' minds to that possibility," Shearer said.

"And even if a woman winds up as an anthropologist, she might end up coaching her daughter's soccer team," Shillingford said. "That would still give the girls on that team a role model that they wouldn't have had otherwise, and right now, especially in basketball and soccer, we don't have many of those female role models."

Shillingford also is careful to point out that she is not opposed to men coaching women. She is just interested in making women aware of the possibilities for themselves. She starts each symposium by telling the group that she is "for women, not against men," and pointing out that she has been married to her husband, Paul, for 45 years.

Shillingford simply doesn't buy into the stereotype that women aren't really interested in coaching or are not as good at it as men.

"I think you build it and they will come," she said. "Women make great coaches."

Spreading the seeds

The next step for Shillingford is to spread the Snell Symposium idea to other NCAA conferences. She noted that the project isn't expensive, especially when the cost is borne by all schools in a conference, as it has been by the 11 members of the Centennial.

But Shillingford also notes that a commitment from Division III could make a huge impact, especially if future programs continued to enroll two participants from each school, with one of them ultimately deciding to become a coach.

"There are 28 Division III conferences in the NCAA, representing 265 schools," she wrote in an article last year for the National Association for Girls and Women in Sport. "If each conference school supplied one (future) coach, the number of women coaches could be increased by 265."

Shillingford, who will remain at Ursinus as the Snell Chair through June 1, is working on the preparation of materials for other conferences that might be interested.

"I'm making it pretty specific," she said. "But this isn't rocket science. Any conference could do it. If each conference in the NCAA considered this project, it would make an enormous difference."