Diversity and inclusion, Charlotte Westerhaus insists, surround every single person every single day — in the classroom, on the fields and courts, and in athletics department offices.

As NCAA vice president for diversity and inclusion, Westerhaus should know.

“Diversity and inclusion are not new things, but they are not going to be old-fashioned anytime soon,” she said.

The key to keeping the topic top of mind in the NCAA membership, Westerhaus said, is to continue to provide fresh strategies and tools that will allow the intercollegiate athletics community to take full advantage of all the benefits that diversity and inclusion offer.

That’s what the office for diversity and inclusion (ODI) is for the NCAA — a fresh strategy, a new tool in the Association’s ongoing push to achieve goals directed at equal treatment. More specifically, the office is expected to lead the membership in creating a culture that truly embraces and celebrates difference. Now just eight months into the journey, ODI already is instilling renewed energy and excitement into a familiar topic.

The office nearly wasn’t an office at all. Bernard Franklin, NCAA senior vice president for governance and membership services, said that ODI initially was discussed as a virtual office — without dedicated staff or physical office space. However, a closer examination of the diversity-related issues facing the Association indicated something more was needed.

“As we looked at the challenges related to diversity and inclusion, after a period of time, it became evident to a number of us that we had to move from an office that was virtual to an office that was real and that had resources attached to address the many challenges that we saw,” said Franklin.

The office also has roots in the NCAA strategic plan, which touts diversity and inclusion as being among the Association’s core values.

Said Franklin, “Having a real office positioned us to have more of a strategic direction to address the issues and challenges of diversity and inclusion,” said Franklin. “It gave us focus and a purpose and a sense of direction about how we were going to approach those issues.”

By and large the move to create ODI has been cheered within the membership, not only for the direct line of communication it opens to the national office about the topic, but also because it affirms just how serious the Association is about the issue.

“At any previous point in the history of this issue being discussed at the college level, I think I would have been very skeptical about an announcement like that,” said Richard Lapchick, president and chief executive officer of the National Consortium for Academics and Sport at the University of Central Florida. “But I think (NCAA President) Myles Brand made a stamp on his administration from the day he became president to make the issue of diversity and inclusion a priority.”

Program expansion

Since officially joining the national office staff from the University of Iowa last August, Westerhaus has set an energetic pace. Upon beginning her tenure, she identified three challenges she believed the office would face in its first 90 days — staffing; bringing synergy to current diversity programming and using it as a basis for future initiatives; and assessing the needs, goals and issues of the membership.

As the office approaches its first anniversary, it is nearly fully staffed. Ultimately, six full-time administrators will be dedicated to ODI. In addition, every program that now resides under the ODI umbrella has been reviewed. Many, such as the NCAA internship program, the NCAA Fellows Leadership program, Leadership Institutes for Ethnic Minority Males and Females, the NCAA Men’s Coaches Academy and many other diversity- and gender-related scholarship and grant programs represent existing membership efforts to address the issue.

As a result of the review, one of the office’s most visible programming efforts, the Men’s Coaches Academy, was revised and expanded. Launched in 2004, the academy was designed to assist ethnic minority football coaches with career advancement. Originally, the academy included “advanced” and “expert” components. However, in a move based in part on survey data collected at the 2006 American Football Coaches Association convention, the current advanced academy will in June 2007 become simply the Football Coaching Academy and will be available to any ethnic minority football coach with one to eight years of experience.

In its present form, the Expert Coaching Academy focuses on developing coaching approaches, strengthening the coach-player relationship, game strategies, game-day coaching skills and handling off-the-field concerns. Although it will still be held in conjunction with the Black Coaches Association national convention, in its revised format, the three-day Expert Coaching Academy will take a more global approach.

“The Expert Coaching Academy will include more information on how to connect with university presidents and the academic mission of the university. Those coaches don’t need Xs and Os,” said Westerhaus. “They want a more global picture of how to be a successful coach.”

A third initiative, called the Future Coaches Academy, is a new component that will target college juniors and seniors and recent graduates interested in joining the coaching ranks after completing their collegiate careers. The AFCA and National Football League will partner with the Association in sponsoring the academy, which supporters hope will assist in feeding the pipeline by encouraging more people of color to become interested in coaching. The Future Coaches Academy is scheduled to debut at the AFCA convention in January 2007.

Guiding committee

As for the third of the three challenges Westerhaus identified upon taking office — assessing the needs, goals and issues of the membership — ODI has made significant strides there as well. In fact, perhaps the most critical accomplishment in the office’s brief history is the creation of the Diversity Leadership Strategic Planning Committee. Led by Westerhaus and Vice Chair Andy Geiger, former director of athletics at Ohio State University, the group of about 40 athletics administrators, coaches and representatives of key coaching organizations created in January already has begun working on a diversity and inclusion strategic plan.

The committee, which met for the first time at January’s NCAA Convention in Indianapolis, received its charge from NCAA President Brand, who said he wants the group to set the Association’s agenda on this issue. The committee has been divided into subcommittees that will examine four areas:

n Foster the diversity of student-athletes;

n Promote a climate of inclusion within intercollegiate athletics;

n Enhance equitable career opportunities for under-represented coaches, officials and administrators; and

n Strengthen the support, integration and promotion of women’s sports within intercollegiate athletics.

The group will meet again later this month and is expected to present recommendations at the 2007 NCAA Convention.

Westerhaus said her office’s biggest hurdle is the development of the diversity strategic plan by the end of this year. But as the office approaches the end of its first year of operation, other challenges loom on the horizon, too. Among them is clarifying what diversity and inclusion actually mean.

Said committee member and Arizona State Athletics Director Lisa Love, “I don’t think the membership sees it as two different concepts — and it’s worthwhile for the office to define it. Most people at the university level or in the membership are concerned about the forest fire in front of them, if you will, so clarity in these kinds of initiatives goes a long way.”

Westerhaus recognizes the need for more understanding on the issue. “People think that diversity is just race and gender, and those are very important, but it is broader than that,” she said. “Diversity, broadly defined, includes every student-athlete, coach, athletics administrator — everybody involved in the NCAA and intercollegiate athletics. When we look at inclusion, we want to make sure that the talent that diversity brings is fully incorporated in a manner so that everyone excels based on their abilities.”

Getting that message across to the membership may be a long-term project; however, Westerhaus believes that NCAA student-athletes see, understand and appreciate not only the distinction between the two ideals but also how broad the categories really are. She hopes that administrators throughout the membership will take their cues from the student-athletes. Any effective educator understands the importance of visuals and in this case, Westerhaus said, she plans to provide examples of student-athletes role-modeling diversity and inclusion to show the rest of the membership that the goals are, indeed, achievable.

Campus responsibility

Beyond ensuring that everyone is working from the same definitions and philosophies, the NCAA’s Franklin said change itself is always difficult. He said in fact that ODI likely will encounter some resistance, not necessarily to the goals and objectives of diversity and inclusion, but to change in general. That said, Franklin noted that the sort of change that ODI represents is a must, and it will in the end create a stronger intercollegiate athletics culture.

From the perspective of M. Dianne Murphy, director of athletics at Columbia University-Barnard College, another major challenge will be emphasizing to schools that even with a clear vision, the plan ultimately must be executed on campus. Murphy, a former chair of the Women’s Basketball Issues Committee, said for example that one of that group’s continual focuses was the marketing of the women’s game. Regardless of the resources the committee made available to schools, Murphy said, universities had to be able to market on their own campuses. Likewise, any move toward making the college athletics environment more diverse and inclusive will have to involve individual campuses doing their part.

“That’s where we need to make those connections,” said Murphy. “The leadership at the NCAA is committed to diversity, but we have to find a way to do the things we want to do on our own campuses. That’s where the challenges are — implementing the vision and initiatives that this office is going to be responsible for.”

In less than a year, ODI has made significant strides. In going forward, Franklin cautioned that the issues being tackled by ODI are not ones that can be addressed quickly. Rather, it will take time and commitment from various groups within the membership working with the national office staff. The issue can’t be just about the numbers, he said.

“If you get the numbers, but you don’t change the environment, you put folks in an environment where they don’t feel included,” said Franklin. “Why would you want to stay or be in a place where you are not included or seen as valuable?

“I don’t mean to overplay the word ‘strategic,’ but in terms of addressing the issues, that’s exactly how we have to go about them. If you take a long-term view of the goals and objectives of this office, we would expect some years into this journey to see a more diverse and inclusive culture within intercollegiate athletics.”