The NCAA Leadership Conference strives to provide transformational experiences for student-athletes, so it's not surprising that the concept is going through changes of its own.

The program began in 1997 as an annual national conference for student-athletes from schools participating in the CHAMPS/Life Skills program. Now, it is evolving into regional conferences designed to offer the experience more widely while focusing on specific interests in each of the Association's membership divisions.

It's too soon to come to conclusions about the expanded program's impact, but early indications are that the conferences are playing an important role in energizing campus student-athlete advisory committees, while spurring student-athletes to become more involved in campus life away from the playing fields and courts.

Using the national conference as the model, Divisions II and III already have offered regional conferences for student-athletes, and Division I now is planning its own sessions.

Program administrators give much of the credit for the regional conferences to the Division III Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. That group suggested that Division III student-athletes would benefit from a conference that retained the format of the national gathering while focusing on issues more relevant to nonscholarship athletes.

"We had a meeting, about three years ago, right after some of us had returned from our first Leadership Conference," recalls Meg Stevens, head women's lacrosse coach and CHAMPS/Life Skills coordinator at State University College at Buffalo and former chair of the Division III Student-Athlete Advisory Committee.

"Someone from the NCAA walked in the room and said, 'You guys are a good brainstorming group. Let's say you had an unlimited amount of money. What would you do with it?' We brainstormed, and because we'd just discussed the Leadership Conference, one of the things we came up with was that not many Division III student-athletes had been at the conference due to the low number of CHAMPS programs at Division III institutions at that time."

The committee sketched out a format for a Division III conference. "Our staff liaisons took that back and, six months later, they came back and said, 'This might be a go,' " Stevens said.

Division III was first to the starting blocks with its inaugural regional conference last fall in Boston, and it recently hosted its second conference in Minneapolis. Division II quickly picked up the idea and presented its first conference -- dubbed the Division II Student-Athlete Leadership Action Academy -- in late February in Indianapolis.

"I was one of the few members who was on SAAC from when the idea first came up to when the first conference happened," Stevens said. "So when I got off the plane (in Boston) I was thinking, 'This is what we've been waiting for.'

"I continue to talk to a lot of the participants. I still get e-mail from them saying how much they learned and how much they brought back to campus, and how much they're looking to expand upon it. Students, coaches and administrators who I've heard from have said it has changed their campus."

Bringing back enthusiasm

NCAA education services staff members will be devising ways to document the degree of change on those campuses. But early, anecdotal feedback indicates the conferences may be producing such specific results as energizing local student-athlete advisory committees -- even in places where such committees either previously didn't exist or were ineffective.

"One thing I can say with certainty is that the student-athletes have gone back and reshaped and energized their SAACs, significantly," said Lynne Kaplan, an NCAA contractor who originally became involved with the national conference as a consultant to the Walt Disney Company, the national conference's original host. She now organizes and designs the national and regional conferences through her own firm, Lynne Kaplan and Associates.

"Some student-athletes, when they came, they weren't even sure what a SAAC was, or it wasn't really functioning on their campus -- it was just in place because it had to be. But they've gone back and really made it a functioning group. That's happened across divisions and nationally; we've heard that from lots of places."

That is a hoped-for -- and planned-for -- result.

"We've always felt the leadership conferences were a good incubator for interest in ways to make the SAACs better," said Ron Stratten, NCAA vice-president for education services. "Even though SAACs are mandated, many athletics administrators have not initiated or done much with it. From the very beginning, we've made available sessions that talked about how to develop a SAAC.

"By bringing together 275 or 300 student-athletes, you're going to get a lot of ideas -- 'This is what we're doing,' 'This is what we tried, but it didn't work for us' -- and all those things mixed together are something the student-athletes otherwise don't have a chance to get. For the most part, their experiences have been rather homogenous. The idea of coming together with 300 students, all bright and from all over the country, and from different sports that you never interact with -- that's a really enlightening experience."

Kay Schallenkamp, president of Emporia State University, gained an appreciation for the importance of SAACs as the Division II Presidents Council's liaison to the Division II Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. Now, as Presidents Council chair, she perceives the role that leadership conferences can play in energizing campus committees.

"We had two students (a football player and a female basketball player) attend the 2001 Leadership Conference," said Schallenkamp, who also chairs the Division II Presidents Council. "When they came back, they were so pumped, and they wanted to do some extra things on campus with the SAAC and with all student-athletes. They carried back some of that energy and that enthusiasm, and had an immediate impact on the campus.

"I think there will be that kind of spillover, especially now when we'll have more campuses and more conferences able to attend."

Creating a team concept

One significant difference between the national and regional conferences is that schools participating in the regional conferences send not just one student-athlete but as many as three -- along with an administrator or coach from the institution. Those representatives then work together after the conference as a team on a campus project.

"We said we really want athletics administrators and coaches there," Stevens said, recalling the Division III SAAC's initial brainstorming session. "This isn't just a leadership experience for student-athletes; it's a leadership experience for everyone. And then we thought we need more than one person from each school. We wanted to create a team concept. So we said, you could bring two or three students, along with a coach or administrator, and now you have a team.

"Now, when you send people back to campuses, they have some fighting power."

If "fighting power" means that student-athletes are both more empowered and more involved in campus life, Schallenkamp sees evidence at her institution that it's true.

"I have seen students much more involved in the campus; I see them in venues where I didn't see them before," she said. "I think they're reaching out, and they're broadening their own horizons, but by doing that, they're impacting the campus as well because they are leaders. They're very enthusiastic, and in most instances they are gregarious people. So just being around these people changes the complexion of the campus."

And the coaches and administrators attending the regional conferences also apparently are finding themselves re-energized. Kaplan says that's not surprising, judging from the experiences of campus personnel who attended the national conferences as discussion leaders or "facilitators."

"There are benefits for the student-athletes, but there also are huge benefits for the facilitators," she said. "The growth of these people is phenomenal.

"Some of the original facilitators came back to be Division II facilitators, and they look at their lives and careers very differently based on their experience as facilitators at the national conference. They have taken different jobs, they've been promoted, they've gone back to graduate school. There is a huge benefit to their development, as well."

Alfreeda Goff, associate commissioner of the Horizon League and a member of the Division I Management Council, is eager to see Division I student-athletes -- and her fellow administrators and coaches -- enjoy those same benefits.

"I think it's a two-way street," said Goff, who participated in a national conference as a speaker on career opportunities in intercollegiate athletics. "Students walk away with so many benefits that enhance their own experiences as student-athletes on campuses, and maybe even skew them toward coming into intercollegiate athletics in some form. In return, as staff members or administrators in the NCAA, it gives us an opportunity to see what our students need. Sometimes we know what they need, but oftentimes we don't. It's an eye-opener to see what we need to do to enhance the student-athlete experience, and see what we need to provide them with to prepare them for life after intercollegiate athletics."

Capacity for leadership

Divisions II and III expect to give every institution the opportunity within the next three years to send a team of participants to one of the conferences. Division I still is planning its format.

After the first round of regional conferences, each division's governing bodies likely will review results and consider whether to extend the program.

"I believe we'd be looking at the evaluations and the feedback we get from the participants," Schallenkamp said about the Division II conferences. "Then we'd be looking at the tangible changes that will be reported through the conference and campus SAACs."

Goff believes the Division I Management Council likely will look first at the extent of participation in the conferences. "I think that's key, because there's no sense in having something where you don't have maximum participation." She also expects to review such factors as whether the conferences are scheduled to permit maximum access and feedback from participants.

Stratten anticipates the governing bodies will be looking for these results from the conferences: "That they had increasing participation. That the impact back on campus was significant, and as significant as promised -- we ask them what they're going to do back there, and they have to develop a project, and then we ask, did you do it? What was the impact? How were things changed?"

Stratten said he would like to see leadership implemented on the participants' campuses. "We would like to have the athletics community improved as a result of the campus experience that is initiated as a result of the conference," he said. "And at the regional level, we'd like it to continue to be transformational -- that we get both anecdotally and factually that people have been transformed and their behaviors are different now."

And as for the program component that started the ball rolling back in 1997, Stratten believes the national conference will continue to thrive, even as the regional conferences emerge and grow.

"At the national level, we only had a maximum of 300 student-athletes affected, and then they went out and tried to work with 300 institutions," he said. " That left us with 600 institutions untouched. What we've tried to do with the regional conferences is to take that 300, and leverage that with others. We're trying to get that number to 600 or 700 or 800 that are being affected.

"The issue for us is, how do we create capacity for leadership? Creating capacity means that every campus is somehow being connected to this leadership opportunity, that it leverages that opportunity on that campus, and that student-athletes benefit from that."

And the NCAA and its membership divisions ultimately may benefit as well.

"We're developing the next group of leaders in athletics," Schallenkamp said. "These are our future ADs, future SWAs, future Management Council members. They're going to be better members for governance groups and for committees. So I believe that through these conferences, we are investing in the future of the organization."