No matter what Division III decides after completing a two-year pilot drug-education and testing program, one outcome already seems certain: Member institutions probably can count on help from the NCAA in battling more than just drugs that enhance athletic performance.

In addition to approving the pilot program beginning in fall 2007, the Division III Presidents Council made $325,000 available immediately to provide member schools with more resources to combat alcohol, tobacco and other drug use — and administrators think that’s probably just the beginning of a sustained attack.

"I’m pretty confident, now that we’re already ramping up our efforts on the educational side, that those educational efforts will continue to be enhanced," said Dan Dutcher, NCAA Division III vice president.

That’s not to minimize the importance of the pilot program itself, which is being designed to help Division III learn whether education alone can deter drug use by student-athletes — or whether testing is needed, too.

But the Council’s recent action makes clear there is as at least as much interest in battling campus-wide abuse of alcohol and other substances through education as there is in addressing athletics-centered concerns about preserving competitive equity and student-athlete well-being through testing.

"There’s not just a concern about performance-enhancing drug use and abuse, but substance use and abuse in general," Dutcher said. "Many people have told us that alcohol use and abuse is, in their mind, at least as significant if not of greater significance on campus than any other drug use. We can’t underestimate the need to try to address substance abuse — and not just abuse of performance-enhancing drugs or even street drugs."

As a result, Division III institutions are being offered expanded access to highly regarded NCAA educational programs that have existed for years, and schools also eventually may receive assistance through sources such as the Strategic Initiatives Grant Program to explore other educational approaches.

That significant commitment is easy to overlook in the shadow of the more groundbreaking half of the Council’s recent actions: Division III will conduct drug testing for the first time outside of championships as part of the voluntary two-year pilot program involving about 100 institutions.

Following expressions of interest in the pilot program from about 145 institutions, those schools have been asked to decide by December 6 whether they actually are able and willing to be included as participants.

All of the institutions selected will be required to implement a model education program targeting student-athletes. Many, though not all, of the schools also will experience random selection of student-athletes for drug testing sometime during the academic year.

The purpose of the pilot is to measure, through assessment before the program begins and again at the end, whether education — with or without testing — can reduce substance use.

"We really want to look at the results to help us determine to what extent education, testing and the combination can move the needle," Dutcher said. "That’s where the research component will be critical. We’re not just testing to deter, or educating to deter — we’re educating and testing to try to determine how those initiatives can help affect student-athlete behavior."

Experience in the NCAA’s two other divisions suggests that education is more effective accompanied by testing than without, says Mary Wilfert, NCAA associate director of education outreach and a staff liaison to the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports, which recommended a year ago that Division III conduct a pilot testing program that did not specifically include an educational component.

"We see education as part of a comprehensive approach that also includes having a written policy in place to address the issues a school needs to address and — for performance-enhancing drugs — testing," she said. "Education has a benefit in and of itself, but it also supports the other two legs."

However, the pilot program represents the first effort in any division to measure specifically how education and testing interact to deter substance use.

"We’ve had an NCAA education program since the 1970s, but how that plays out on campus never has been measured," Wilfert said. "To be able to say that, with education alone we got this level of deterrence, and then when we couple education with testing we got this level — I don’t have confidence in saying that."

Presidents Council members cited support for combining testing and education by the Division III Student-Athlete Advisory Committee as a reason for approving the pilot effort, which will run through the 2007-08 and 2008-09 academic years.

Heather Mathis, a recently graduated soccer student-athlete at Maryville College (Tennessee) who represents SAAC on the Division III Management Council, said student-athletes were concerned that the proposed pilot initially addressed only testing, without education.

"Our consensus was, drug testing is OK, but what’s the point in testing if student-athletes aren’t going to be educated?" she said.

However, SAAC members also made clear that testing should be a part of the pilot program.

"The off season is more of a problem than championships," said Mathis, citing SAAC members’ personal experience with teammates and opponents. "When specific performance-enhancing drugs are used, they’re cycling off before championships, when Division III does testing. We were looking at it as, you know when you’re getting tested, so why not try to see if there’s a problem outside of championships testing."

Dutcher thinks SAAC’s stance — along with factors such as revelations from recent congressional hearings and federal investigations into substance use and abuse in professional sports — probably is impacting Division III’s historical reluctance to treat student-athletes differently from other students on campuses by subjecting them to testing.

"I think there has been a reluctance to create a problem that doesn’t exist," he said. "That’s been part of the discussion historically. And I think that’s where the feedback from our Division III Student-Athlete Advisory Committee has been helpful — their perception is that a problem really does exist."

The schools selected to help test whether that perception is reality will do more than make student-athletes available for testing. Administrators, coaches and student-athletes at the institutions also will help evaluate the quality of educational efforts and report their perceptions of the impact of the program.

The schools that will be selected later this month to participate in the program will be chosen to "look" like the Division III membership, said Eric Hartung, NCAA associate director of research.

"We want to make sure our sampled schools are representative of the larger Division III membership, in terms of school type, enrollment, sports sponsorship, and conference affiliation and geography," he said.

By the time the pilot program ends in 2009, it will generate drug-test results (which will be reported only in division-wide, aggregate form, without sanctions for positive tests), a baseline survey of Division III student-athletes’ self-reported use of various substances, and opinions before and after the pilot about the quality of drug-education and testing processes and their impact on substance use.

"This is a pre-post design," Hartung explained. "The idea is that we’ll go in next August, before the education and testing begin, and ask questions to pin down perceptions of the program: ‘What do you think is going to happen? What do you think the effect is going to be? How do you think it’s going to be done? How is this going to be received on campus? Do you believe that an education program can deter use?’

"Then, we’ll go back after a year. We can evaluate whether there’s any change in perception."

The baseline data on student-athletes’ self-reported use of substances will be obtained from a specially tailored version of the Association-wide drug-use survey the NCAA conducts every four years.

Dutcher hopes the comprehensive approach will provide a full picture of any shift in perceptions and behavior.

"We’re going to go to student-athletes, and we’re also going to go to other key campus constituents to try to get a sense from them as well how this program affected student-athlete behavior," he said.

Every school participating in the pilot also will be required to implement a model education plan, which includes steps the NCAA has urged institutions to follow for years, but never previously measured the extent to which those steps are implemented.

Wilfert said the plan describes what should happen before the school year starts — the school should make sure it has a written policy that addresses the issues it needs to address, such as the banned-drugs list, institutional policies on alcohol use, and consequences for any violations. She said implementing the policy is as important to achieving a drug-free environment as education and testing.

"Then the model identifies the times when information needs to be shared with student-athletes," she said. "It discusses providing the banned-drugs list and policies to incoming student-athletes, when they arrive on campus or at orientation or in team meetings, and also in the second semester for transfer student-athletes who may have missed those initial presentations."

While the model focuses much of a school’s attention on educational processes and schedules, it also encourages taking advantage of opportunities to share educational content.

"There are opportunities to educate about substances and issues," Wilfert said. "Sometimes in meetings, schools will bring in outside speakers, but that’s not a requirement of the model — it’s a recommendation for enhancing it. We identify a couple of ways they can enhance education."

While pilot participants must implement the plan, every Division III institution has the opportunity to use it. The plan was shared with all schools at the beginning of the current academic year.

Last fall, all schools also received information about opportunities to participate in the NCAA CHOICES program and to receive speaker grants.

As a result of a $150,000 allocation by the Presidents Council, five additional grants were awarded to Division III applicants to design and implement programs that integrate athletics into campus-wide alcohol-abuse prevention efforts. In addition, $175,000 in matching grants have been allocated to Division III schools that apply to bring outside speakers to campus for presentations on alcohol and other drugs, and/or hazing, through the NCAA Health and Safety Speaker Grant Program.

There also likely will be additional opportunities beginning next year to participate in APPLE Conferences, which enable institutional personnel to analyze substance-abuse prevention efforts in their own athletics departments and create a plan for improving such initiatives.

Those programs most directly address campus-wide concerns about alcohol use and abuse, Wilfert said.

"There is more alcohol use and abuse than for any other substance, so these are appropriately placed resources," she said. "When you talk to presidents, they name alcohol abuse as the No. 1 problem on campus — they are concerned about marijuana and other drugs, too, but alcohol use is where they see the most damage occurring on campus, the most recidivism for student…that’s where they see the biggest toll among students in general."

A successful pilot would have two results, Division III officials believe: It will demonstrate success in deterring substance use and abuse, and it will produce credible data for determining which methods of achieving deterrence are most effective.

However, even though some might assume a combination of education and testing is the best deterrent, Dutcher says the goal of the pilot is to determine which approach works best for Division III.

"I can’t emphasize enough, nobody should conclude that we’re automatically going to establish a division-wide (testing) program after the pilot expires," Dutcher said. "We’re really looking at the pilot to help us decide what direction to go with this.

"Realistically, the options are to simply extend NCAA funding of education, to begin looking at helping fund testing by institutions if they feel that’s something they want to do, to look at extending the pilot for another group of institutions, or to look at establishing the education and testing program on a mandatory basis. We’re looking at membership feedback as well as the pilot results to help us make that decision."

The Presidents Council could approve additional funding to supplement institutional efforts — whether it’s further improving educational support or helping schools establish their own testing programs (the last NCAA drug-education and testing survey indicated that only about one-eighth of Division III institutions test student-athletes for substance use). The Council also could decide to offer the experience of the pilot education and testing program to another group of volunteering institutions.

However, the Division III membership would make the ultimate call on any recommendation to implement a mandatory testing program, Dutcher said.

"That would be consistent with our approach to issues of that gravity and significance in the past — we’ve put those up for a membership vote," he said.

Meanwhile, the membership will have a brief opportunity to learn more about — and begin discussing — the pilot effort and its possible outcomes during the Division III business session January 8 at the NCAA Convention, when time will be set aside for that purpose.

And every Division III institution — regardless of inclusion in the pilot program — now has an opportunity to take advantage of Division III resources to support establishing an educational plan and developing educational programming. It’s an opportunity that likely will remain available for some time to come.

"The only thing I’d say we’re already committed to is maintaining greater funding for education," Dutcher said.