Ohio State's athletics program, with 36 sports and nearly 1,000 student-athletes, is part of this great university's identity and spirit. While most of the sports do not have a high profile or big budget and do not attract large crowds, they all provide an opportunity for students to demonstrate skills and learn discipline that help them succeed both in the classroom and in life.

No university can afford to maintain an athletics program that is not fully integrated into the academic life of the institution. As NCAA President Myles Brand put it recently in his State of the Association address at the 2005 NCAA Convention, "College sports cannot be more about sports than college." I agree wholeheartedly. With that guiding principle, we have been aggressive in policing our own program, self-reporting violations and working to tighten the linkages between athletics and academics.

First, our student-athletes and athletics staff support and live by NCAA rules. Our two major sports are under NCAA investigation because we self-reported the alleged violations. When allegations against our football program first surfaced in July 2003, we immediately initiated an investigation, working closely with the NCAA. And when we learned of alleged improprieties in our basketball program a year later, we took the very public step of terminating the basketball coach and moving forward with an aggressive and thorough investigation.

Second, I have asked retiring Athletics Director Andy Geiger to oversee additional steps to enhance the ties between athletics and academics, to further strengthen the compliance program, and to more thoroughly educate Buckeye boosters and supporters about proper relationships with student-athletes.

What we are doing relative to academic advising aligns with the recent report of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics called, "Academic Integrity in Intercollegiate Athletics: Principles, Rules, and Best Practices." We are moving academic advising for student-athletes into the office of academic affairs, reporting to the vice-provost and dean for undergraduate studies. This organizational change, which will unite oversight of academic advising for all students under the provost, will benefit student-athletes by facilitating greater collaboration between advisors of student-athletes and advisors in our academic units. It also acknowledges our responsibility to support the academic success of all students.

Compliance is about both education and monitoring. Ohio State's rigorous compliance program is recognized as one of the best in the country. Nonetheless, we have taken additional steps to ensure that both aspects of compliance are as strong as possible:

• Attendance at the mandatory compliance-education programs is being stringently enforced;

• A new dual reporting relationship for our compliance program to athletics and the university's office of legal affairs has been established;

• The university general counsel participates in the biweekly meetings of the executive compliance committee; and

• Attorneys from the office of legal affairs meet weekly with athletics compliance staff.

Together, these two units are conducting an ongoing comprehensive compliance review, and we are adding and strengthening compliance incentives in coaches' contracts and building consequences into coaches' evaluations.

With the help of a booster education task force, the job of reaching our thousands of sports fans with materials on NCAA rules and proper athlete-fan contact has begun. Every fan who buys a ticket will receive a pamphlet called "The Rules of the Game." Articles will appear in our various sports communications and the Ohio State Alumni Magazine. Targeted communications are being designed for special interest groups, such as booster and "friends of" groups, faculty and staff, and car dealers, for example. This tremendous effort is underway and will be sustained as we work to create what Andy Geiger calls "compliance consciousness." We are also investigating ways to provide more effective sanctions for boosters involved in serious violations.

Ohio State has taken many hits in the media over the past year. Yet I believe we have a strong program that is working as it should to identify problems and solve them. Furthermore, I think we will emerge from this current effort even stronger and better equipped than ever before to maintain Ohio State's athletics program, one of the country's largest, as the "gold standard" of integrity and adherence to NCAA rules.

Karen A. Holbrook is the president of Ohio State University.