Think of it as a lengthy -- and challenging -- "to-do" list.

Division III institutions approved a resolution at the 2004 Convention asking for a study of two crucial areas of concern: membership growth and diversity. But those items are only the first two among a variety of issues raised by Proposal No. 66, which also lists enhancement of institutional and conference autonomy, sport and program equity, and access to championships and other programs and services among areas for review.

During their initial review of the resolution, the Division III Presidents and Management Councils -- and their joint Oversight Group to Implement Proposal No. 66 -- quickly realized they need to seek membership input during the "Future of Division III -- Phase II" initiative in order to shape an agenda that reflects the division's priorities.

So, feedback and research -- obtained from widespread and frequent communication with all Division III constituencies and through a variety of data-gathering efforts, including a membership survey later this year -- will be the primary tools used to shape that "to-do" list into manageable marching orders for the next 18 months.

"My sense of the next year and a half is that we're really at a point in Division III where we need to ask ourselves some hard questions, but the answers aren't predetermined," said Suzanne Coffey, director of athletics at Bates College and chair of the Division III Management Council.

"In the first phase, we knew we were tackling a reform agenda, and we knew the outcome of that was critically important in keeping us together as a division. I think we enter this second phase with a broader set of objectives that allows us in the end to tell a Division III story that we haven't been able to tell before, because we'll have data.

"And it gives us the opportunity to have hard conversations about our size, and the ramifications of our size on our championships. But I don't think, at this point, we can prejudge what the end game is."

Division III is the largest of the three NCAA membership divisions, and has experienced the most dramatic growth among the divisions in recent years. That growth has implications for everything ranging from the size of championship fields to the degree of similarity -- or difference -- among member institutions' missions.

Those circumstances have produced a lengthy list of concerns as membership growth continues and diversity increases, and those concerns clearly are reflected in Proposal No. 66, which the membership approved, 399-9-6, at the Nashville Convention.

But there was little discussion of the resolution at the Convention, as delegates' attention was focused on a wide-ranging package of reform proposals. That left it up to the Councils and the oversight group to interpret where the membership wants to go with Proposal No. 66, and the best way to get there.

"A minimalist approach to understanding our charge would be, it asks us to look at the tremendous growth in our membership over the past several years, and the implications of that in terms of anything from automatic qualifiers in championship play to compatibility of principles and values," said Phillip Stone, president of Bridgewater College (Virginia) and chair of the oversight group.

But Stone believes the membership expects more than just "housekeeping" in reviewing and proposing responses to that growth. Because the resolution was born in an environment of reform and re-evaluation, he and others see an opportunity to address broader issues of a more cultural or philosophical bent.

"We think it invites a very mature and fairly comprehensive review of what is the nature of Division III, what is unique to us, and how do we ensure commonality of values and principles?" he said.

Engaging through feedback

Members of the Management and Presidents Councils believe that extensive communication with the membership -- through Council members' participation in conference meetings, telephone calls to chief executive officers and regular updates via mail and the Internet -- helped produce much of the consensus that emerged for the reform package at the 2004 Convention.

"We were pleased with the success we had last year with -- and we expect to continue -- pretty direct communication systems, so that a member of the Presidents Council or the Management Council will be in touch with almost every CEO within the Association," Stone said. "Sometimes that will be through e-mail, sometimes through letters and sometimes through conference visits, but we worked very hard last year at making direct contacts. We think that was effective, and we'll continue that."

Indeed, the Management Council is formalizing that approach by creating what it is calling "virtual focus groups" -- e-mail discussion groups headed by a Management Council member and including selected individuals from each conference, as well as independent institutions.

Each focus group includes an institutional CEO, athletics director, faculty athletics representative, senior woman administrator, conference commissioner and student-athlete.

"There are six constituent groups represented within each individual focus group," Coffey said. "Every conference, as well as the independents association, has been invited. Management Council representatives are responsible for two or three focus groups apiece, through e-mail correspondence.

"What we as a Council have decided to do is frame issues coming out of our quarterly meetings, and boil them down to the most important issues that we really want to get feedback on."

Council members already are asking the virtual focus groups to suggest which issues listed in Proposal No. 66 currently are most important to Division III institutions, and they also are seeking opinions on how to define and prioritize those issues.

"Rather than my prioritizing, or any member of the Management Council or the Council as a body prioritizing what we think is important, I believe we are right in designing the virtual focus groups to tell us what the priorities ought to be," Coffey said.

"We've agreed as a body that we want to take a look at this large picture, and within the large picture it makes an awful lot of sense to go through the exercise of prioritization, and expand the membership input as broadly as possible. The virtual focus groups are exactly the right place to do that."

Coffey sees the virtual focus groups as a key long-term feature of Division III communication. She believes they could become an important tool to involving the membership in decision-making year-round, not just at the annual Convention.

"My hope is that we use the intensity of the past year's discussions to display to the membership the value of being engaged, and to do so by -- beginning with these virtual focus groups -- saying this isn't a November-to-January process each year; this is really a 12-month process," she said.

"The Management Council understands the year-long work that goes into Conventions, but I think the membership gets more distant from it following each Convention, then begins to get energized again in September when the legislative proposals come out. The virtual focus groups will resolve some of that; we'll continue the engagement, because we're saying to folks, this is coming out of the April meeting, this is what's on the agenda, help us think our way through these issues."

Telling the story

Feedback through the virtual focus groups and other means will help the Council take the pulse of the membership, but few tools reveal the health and well-being of a subject as well as a good X-ray photo.

That's the idea behind another part of the Phase II initiative -- to gather information about Division III through research.

"We need to gather data about what our current practices are," Coffey said. "It's a snapshot; where are we now as a division?

"With data collection, we're better able to tell our story; we'll use less anecdote and more facts. That would be a goal, and it's an important feature of what we need to be doing in this second phase."

The strategic plan recently adopted by the NCAA Executive Committee endorses improved use of research in pursing strategic goals, and the Division III Councils and oversight group are embracing that opportunity.

"There definitely has been a commitment on the part of the NCAA and its research staff to address more of these Division III issues," said Mike Miranda, faculty athletics representative at Plattsburgh State University of New York and vice-chair of the Division III Management Council.

Miranda has considerable insight into the potential value of data collection for Division III, drawing from his experience as the current chair of the Association-wide Research Committee. He noted that some of the opposition to reform proposals at the 2004 Convention was based on concern that evidence of problems was anecdotal in nature.

He also understands that some information will be difficult to obtain, which presents a challenge in any effort to address the broader cultural and philosophical issues to which Stone referred.

"Some things are fairly easily quantifiable: The kinds of majors people are in, the quality indicators students bring with them that schools are checking on the front end, and the quality indicators that arise on their way out -- things like GREs (Graduate Record Examination)," Miranda said.

"Much, though, is less quantifiable."

For example, Division III institutions agree under the division philosophy statement that student-athletes will be representative of the general student population on campuses. But defining what constitutes being "representative" -- much less determining how to measure it -- will be a real challenge, Miranda said.

"Let's say you have 100 students in your population, and 15 will be involved in some kind of club on campus, then the notion is, student-athletes should be relatively the same; if that's representative of the general student population, then for every 100 student-athletes, there should be roughly 15 participating in some kind of club," Miranda said. "But that's a little problematic, because it depends on how you define your terms; is participation on an athletics team considered a club activity?"

The widening diversity of the membership further complicates the effort, by making it difficult to compare institutions of varying enrollment, funding and mission. Plus, any successful effort probably will require Division III to ask institutions for information they never have been asked for before.

"I think there's enough willingness on the part of institutions to participate, but there's always the worry that when you start asking for information, people are going to wonder why, what're you up to?" Miranda said. "It's important to note, at this point, there's not any particular legislative or regulatory intent behind any of this; it is data-gathering."

Miranda believes those data are more likely than not to confirm that Division III as a whole is doing things right in terms of educating student-athletes and ensuring they are an integral part of the campus population.

"I think there's some potential for individual institutions to be, I won't say 'shocked,' but to have some questions raised," he said. "But I don't think overall we'll find anything too terribly surprising."

Establishing consensus

Even if membership feedback and research point toward a consensus about philosophical and cultural issues, that does not necessarily mean adopting new rules or limitations on Division III members, said Stone, who will become chair of the Division III Presidents Council July 1 after the retirement of current chair and Middlebury College President John McCardell.

Stone suggests the Phase II effort may succeed best by prodding institutions to check themselves on their own campuses and within their conferences, and ensure they are making athletics an "integral part" of their mission.

"This may be an area where...we ought to be thinking more about what I'd call moral suasion, or persuasion, that would have us focus in a more disciplined way on what our values are in Division III -- and to appeal to our members to make sure, through self-reflection and conversation and analysis, that each of us is living up to those values," Stone said.

"I think there's going to be a lot of self-reflection and self-analysis. I do think there are going to be some things grow out of this that we could agree upon in common, and that could lead to some legislation, but frankly I have not heard of any that is emerging right now that we'd need to propose."

The Phase II effort presents an opportunity for the membership to look beyond rules and consider what it means to be part of Division III, Stone said.

"I hope they would find it's kind of refreshing and inspiring to be able to talk about our broad issues, values and aspirations," he said. "Most of us are people who, by the very nature of working with and developing young people, want to feel that sense of fulfillment, and not just deal with the nuts and bolts of legislation and rule-making."

Collecting feedback and pursuing data will be useful in measuring the pulse of the membership and taking a snapshot of where the division is now, but the best result may be one that causes each institution and conference to regularly and reliably check its own mission and philosophies -- and focus on remaining true to that mission in its education and treatment of student-athletes.

"That, I think, would be just revolutionary if we could get that done across the country," Stone said. "I think that would be the most dramatic reform we could make."