Many people who have carved their niches in athletics are by nature ambitious, energetic and forward-thinking individuals who love to break barriers and make progress.

Those characteristics are no more readily apparent than in the members who compose the NCAA Diversity Leadership Strategic Planning Committee.

Established in January 2006 by NCAA President Myles Brand and charged with developing the Association’s agenda for living up to its core value of diversity and inclusion, the 40-member body has spent the past year formulating strategies and best practices. Led by Andy Geiger, former director of athletics at Ohio State University, and Charlotte Westerhaus, NCAA vice president for diversity and inclusion, the group focused on four areas: fostering the diversity of student-athletes; promoting a climate of inclusion; recruitment, hiring and retention; and support, integration and promotion of women’s sports.

Though the meeting-and-report phase of the group’s work is officially concluded, members agree their effort represents a beginning more than an end. Now, the baton for change is in the membership’s hands.

“If this dies and doesn’t move like it should, it’ll be one of those things that people say, ‘Here we go again with a lot of talk and no action,’ ” said committee member and University of Georgia Athletics Director Damon Evans. “This is an important issue facing intercollegiate athletics and people need to see a good response. I know this committee met the charge; however, there’s a lot more to do.”

Range of recommendations

To that end, the report already is being circulated within the governance structure, including the three Management Councils, the Division I Board of Directors and the Executive Committee Subcommittee for Gender and Diversity. Those groups will pay particular attention to legislative recommendations that include:

• Increasing allocations to conference offices for diversity-related programming.
• Developing an annual report for member institutions and conferences that tracks progress in promoting diversity and inclusion.
• Requiring each member institution to create a diversity-education program for administrators, faculty athletics representatives, campus athletics councils, coaches and student-athletes.
• Using the Division I athletics certification process and the Divisions II and III self-studies to ensure athletics-department commitment to institutional hiring and employment policies.
• Requiring institutions to annually analyze their gender-equity data submitted to the NCAA and address inequities between men’s and women’s programs.
• Designating an individual at each institution to manage institutional plans for improvement in gender, ethnic-minority and diversity issues.
• Increasing the number of ethnic minorities and women within the NCAA governance structure.

Some of those proposals could appear as early as the 2008 legislative cycle.
Programmatic recommendations in the report range from creating a marketing plan for enhancing diversity and inclusion to developing a position paper articulating why stakeholders such as presidents, athletics directors and senior woman administrators should value, support, promote and enhance women’s intercollegiate athletics.
The committee said those could be implemented by the NCAA national office, conferences and member institutions themselves.

Westerhaus praised the report as a “collective effort resulting from a group of committed, experienced, well-intentioned athletics administrators, coaches and student-athletes.” She cited the potential for “a bumper crop” of diversity resources and strategies to become available to the membership within the next two years.
“The committee has fulfilled its charge. Now the membership must embrace the recommendations and strategies as they deem appropriate to their division, conference and campus,” said Westerhaus. “Based on the response the committee received at the Convention, I anticipate good results. But right now, the measure of success is in the hands of the membership.”

Old momentum, new emphasis

Throughout its year-long deliberations, the DLSPC readily acknowledged past and current diversity efforts within the Association. Some committee members in fact, such as New York Institute of Technology Athletics Director Clyde Doughty, said the goal of this most recent effort was not to start fresh but to enhance what already exists.

“This effort isn’t intended to set us apart from previous initiatives — we weren’t trying to come in and change the world,” said Doughty. “We were just trying to pull it all together. If we’re all on the same page and things can be done, let’s try to get them accomplished.”

Similarly, committee member Gloria Nevarez said the DLSPC effort builds on previous momentum to tackle some of the more relevant issues in hiring, gender equity and student-athlete well-being. Nevarez, an associate commissioner with the West Coast Conference, said the DLSPC recommendations address those concerns.

“The question is whether we as a membership can step up and follow those recommendations,” she said.

While acknowledging the efforts of their diversity forerunners, some DLSPC members believe this most recent strategy stands out. Garnett Purnell, director of athletics at Wittenberg University, said a primary difference is the emphasis NCAA President Brand has placed on the DLSPC approach.

“When your CEO speaks of the importance of diversity and inclusion — combined with the fact that he’s a former university president — that’s going to have a ripple effect in which people will give this particular subject a little more attention than they have in the past,” Purnell said.

Georgia’s Evans also believes timing sets this latest initiative apart. He points to Brand’s leadership, the establishment of the diversity and inclusion department at the national office and the DLSPC as elements that allow the collective Association to be as forward-thinking as the individuals on the committee.

The DLSPC plans to reconvene at the 2008 NCAA Convention in Nashville to assess progress. In the meantime, committee members and diversity proponents throughout the membership will focus on maintaining momentum and generating increased interest. Westerhaus said she and others will be watching for tangible increases in the hiring of ethnic minorities and women in administrative and coaching positions, and growth in the diversity of student-athletes in all NCAA-sponsored sports (not just football and basketball). Also desired is an acknowledgement within the membership that diversity is more than a numbers game — rather, that it truly enhances the performance of athletics teams and departments.

In other words, Evans said, NCAA members must make diversity and inclusion part of the intercollegiate athletics environment.

“We discussed ‘achieving excellence through diversity’ as kind of our catch phrase,” he said. “You can look at numbers to see if more opportunities are being provided for the under-represented gender or if under-represented groups are more prevalent in sports they don’t traditionally participate in.

“But for right now, we need to see diversity and inclusion as being an integral part of what the NCAA is about — that living it helps us achieve the excellence for which we want to be known.”