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NCAA News Archive - 2006
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Panelists clarify distinction between service, engagement
Advisory group wants schools to use ‘power of athletics’ to strengthen community bond
Advisory group wants schools to use ‘power of athletics’ to strengthen community bond
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By David Pickle
The NCAA News
The NCAA News
The Division II Community Advisory Group sharpened its focus on what Division II’s community-engagement initiative is intended to accomplish during a December 5 meeting in Indianapolis.
The group discussed the distinction between classic community-service activities, such as reading to grade-school students or making hospital visits, and using athletics to build stronger and more mutually benefcial relationships between institutions and the communities in which they are located.
Extensive discussion at the December 5 meeting made it clear that the group is concerned that the initiative will be compromised if institutional presidents and other key personnel regard the project as too labor intensive or as duplicating programs already in place. That would be unfortunate, said Division II Vice President Mike Racy, since the Division II program seeks to build efficiencies that could maximize benefits with less effort.
“We need to make it extremely clear that we are not asking our membership to create a new wave of community-service activities,” he said. “Those activities are great and they’re important, but they don’t directly relate to what we are trying to develop.”
Instead, the program seeks to capitalize on the fun inherent in college athletics, along with the power of athletics events to bring significant numbers of people together. While almost any athletics marketing strategy is based on those strengths, the Division II plan seeks to use them to promote the institution in general so that its community has a better understanding and appreciation of the benefits that the overall university offers.
Consultant Rich Luker, who is providing administrative support for the Community Advisory Group, noted that many institutions already have coordinated community-engagement plans in place through arrangements such as Campus Compact. Those programs, however, do not appear to routinely tap into athletics to enhance community/institution interaction. That is regrettable, Luker said, because athletics events almost uniquely have the ability to assemble hundreds or thousands of people who by definition are committing to enthusiastic support of their school the moment they walk through the turnstile.
A common refrain at the December 5 meeting was that Division II member institutions and student-athletes themselves would benefit if athletics participants came to be regarded primarily as students of their universities and secondarily as athletes. That is a challenge since most people’s only interaction with student-athletes is watching them play. However, some members of the Community Advisory Group said advances could be made by changing the context of the events and by changing how student-athletes inter-relate within their institutions.
For example, Mars Hill College Athletics Director David Riggins said that his program has begun to use athletics events to call attention to almost anything that the various departments of the college want to promote. That’s quite different from the traditional large-program model in which promotion is most often directed at the athletics program itself and its commercial partners.
Also, Carey Demos, a Division II Student-Athlete Advisory Committee representative, said that her Bentley College campus SAAC has purposefully placed its own members on other key committees throughout the campus (student life, drama and so on) and asked them to report back to the SAAC with the objective of having each group help meet the other groups’ needs. Through efforts such as this, Demos said the Bentley student-athletes discovered that another group on campus was raising money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, duplicating the already extensive efforts of Bentley student-athletes. Through enhanced communication, the two groups joined forces and achieved even better results for Make-A-Wish.
The upside of such approaches seem apparent, but Luker and others remain aware of the complexities of managing the nuance of the project. In the approaching weeks and months, major emphasis will be placed on reviewing the results of community-engagement test programs at Bentley; the University of California, San Diego; Clark Atlanta University; Colorado School of Mines; and the University of Wisconsin, Parkside.
In addition, the program will be discussed twice at the 2007 NCAA Convention — once for presidents and chancellors and once for all delegates (the Convention also will consider legislation that would ease NCAA bylaw restrictions for legitimate community-engagement activities). And in April 2007, up to 100 individuals representing Division II interests will use a Division II/National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators workshop to discuss broad-scale implementation of the program.
Throughout it all, the focus will be on making sure that constituents have a better understanding of what the program is about.
“Community involvement is not necessarily the same as a sense of community,” said Tony Capon, faculty athletics representative at the University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown. “With this program, we’re not reinventing the wheel. Instead, we’re making a better wheel.”
The group discussed the distinction between classic community-service activities, such as reading to grade-school students or making hospital visits, and using athletics to build stronger and more mutually benefcial relationships between institutions and the communities in which they are located.
Extensive discussion at the December 5 meeting made it clear that the group is concerned that the initiative will be compromised if institutional presidents and other key personnel regard the project as too labor intensive or as duplicating programs already in place. That would be unfortunate, said Division II Vice President Mike Racy, since the Division II program seeks to build efficiencies that could maximize benefits with less effort.
“We need to make it extremely clear that we are not asking our membership to create a new wave of community-service activities,” he said. “Those activities are great and they’re important, but they don’t directly relate to what we are trying to develop.”
Instead, the program seeks to capitalize on the fun inherent in college athletics, along with the power of athletics events to bring significant numbers of people together. While almost any athletics marketing strategy is based on those strengths, the Division II plan seeks to use them to promote the institution in general so that its community has a better understanding and appreciation of the benefits that the overall university offers.
Consultant Rich Luker, who is providing administrative support for the Community Advisory Group, noted that many institutions already have coordinated community-engagement plans in place through arrangements such as Campus Compact. Those programs, however, do not appear to routinely tap into athletics to enhance community/institution interaction. That is regrettable, Luker said, because athletics events almost uniquely have the ability to assemble hundreds or thousands of people who by definition are committing to enthusiastic support of their school the moment they walk through the turnstile.
A common refrain at the December 5 meeting was that Division II member institutions and student-athletes themselves would benefit if athletics participants came to be regarded primarily as students of their universities and secondarily as athletes. That is a challenge since most people’s only interaction with student-athletes is watching them play. However, some members of the Community Advisory Group said advances could be made by changing the context of the events and by changing how student-athletes inter-relate within their institutions.
For example, Mars Hill College Athletics Director David Riggins said that his program has begun to use athletics events to call attention to almost anything that the various departments of the college want to promote. That’s quite different from the traditional large-program model in which promotion is most often directed at the athletics program itself and its commercial partners.
Also, Carey Demos, a Division II Student-Athlete Advisory Committee representative, said that her Bentley College campus SAAC has purposefully placed its own members on other key committees throughout the campus (student life, drama and so on) and asked them to report back to the SAAC with the objective of having each group help meet the other groups’ needs. Through efforts such as this, Demos said the Bentley student-athletes discovered that another group on campus was raising money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, duplicating the already extensive efforts of Bentley student-athletes. Through enhanced communication, the two groups joined forces and achieved even better results for Make-A-Wish.
The upside of such approaches seem apparent, but Luker and others remain aware of the complexities of managing the nuance of the project. In the approaching weeks and months, major emphasis will be placed on reviewing the results of community-engagement test programs at Bentley; the University of California, San Diego; Clark Atlanta University; Colorado School of Mines; and the University of Wisconsin, Parkside.
In addition, the program will be discussed twice at the 2007 NCAA Convention — once for presidents and chancellors and once for all delegates (the Convention also will consider legislation that would ease NCAA bylaw restrictions for legitimate community-engagement activities). And in April 2007, up to 100 individuals representing Division II interests will use a Division II/National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators workshop to discuss broad-scale implementation of the program.
Throughout it all, the focus will be on making sure that constituents have a better understanding of what the program is about.
“Community involvement is not necessarily the same as a sense of community,” said Tony Capon, faculty athletics representative at the University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown. “With this program, we’re not reinventing the wheel. Instead, we’re making a better wheel.”
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