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Division II shaping future around community bond
Community engagement is all about geometry in Division II. The division that has used a hexagon in its identity campaign is now circling the wagons around a “town square” initiative that fortifies the triangle connecting campuses, community and alumni.
Not bad for a division that two years ago considered itself merely part of a linear progression of NCAA division affiliations. Now the line is straight up the identity chart.
Two breakthroughs helped that occur. First was the resolve from Division II presidents in June 2005 to conceptualize and eventually implement a strategic-positioning platform that identified the division’s six primary characteristics and attributes (learning, passion, balance, resourcefulness, service and sportsmanship — hence, hexagon). Second was the passage of legislation at the Convention last month that allows Division II institutions to live the platform.
Proposal No. 5, which lets schools suspend normal recruiting restrictions when they conduct initiatives that benefit their communities more than themselves, figuratively bulldozes the ivy-covered walls that often seclude colleges from their communities. Now athletics officials don’t need to worry whether their community-engagement events mix coaches and student-athletes with prospects. Plus, they can better integrate their own community efforts with the university’s, thus building stronger campus relationships and promoting the athletics/education link to the community.
The louder emphasis on community engagement is not meant to imply that institutions aren’t already doing it. But Division II Vice President Mike Racy said the engagement initiative is designed to help recognize on a national level the positive efforts in the membership and to provide resources to schools that want to explore different or new ways of engaging their communities.
“By illuminating Division II community-engagement success stories,” Racy said, “we can help shape public perception about Division II membership.”
To be sure, that is the next logical step now that the strategic-positioning platform is an accepted part of the Division II nomenclature. The trick is how to create more success stories.
“Now that we know we’re headed in this direction — the membership has said it is a good concept — the last piece of the puzzle is to educate members as to how they can apply it,” said Mars Hill College Athletics Director David Riggins, who served on an advisory team that shepherded the community-engagement proposal to fruition.
That body, the Division II Community Advisory Group, assembled a comprehensive report that will help in that regard (available at www.ncaa.org under “Legislation and Governance,” then “Division II,” “Strategic Positioning” and “Community Engagement Report”). But perhaps even more enlightening will be an April workshop designed to provide Division II members with examples of what the engagement initiative is about (see related story on page 19), and a Web site that includes a database of “ideas that work” for institutions to share.
Former Division II Student-Athlete Advisory Committee Chair John Semarero is helping compile the latter, serving as the collection agent to glean what schools already are doing in the engagement realm and categorizing them as a resource for other institutions.
Once the site launches in April, Semarero said users can log on and look for something as specific as an outreach for a soccer team on a Saturday afternoon targeting elderly and middle-school children. “You’ll be able to click those categories and see what other institutions have done,” he said. “We’ll provide contact names and other information to get started.”
Semarero said his goal was to get 50 ideas, but the response he’s getting so far makes him confident that he’ll do far better.
Understanding engagement
In many ways, Division II’s passage of the community-engagement initiative required a leap of faith. Most stakeholders understood it was the right action, even though they might not have been absolutely sure how to apply it on their own campuses. Most Division II athletics departments coordinate some kind of outreach or community service that involves their student-athletes, and some have struggled to understand how engagement differs.
Fortunately, Division II has a head start from several advocates who are skilled at explaining the nuances.
“Engagement is about the partnership or relationship between the campus and the community to benefit both through events that allow people to gather and enjoy each other’s company,” Racy said. “Service or outreach is aimed at providing relief or benefit directly to a person or group in need without the purposeful objective to develop relationships and community.”
Because of their size and locales, most Division II institutions are ideally positioned to take advantage of community engagement, since so much of their “persona” relies on community relationships — it makes sense for them to be the town square of their communities. And the good news is that it’s more about communicating and coordinating existing initiatives than it is about adding more.
For example, Division II members say, why not announce upcoming concerts or theater productions at halftimes of athletics events? Why not list the campus events schedule on the athletics Web page? Why not coordinate campus-based engagement efforts under one office? That kind of cross promotion not only sends a positive signal about athletics to the other campus departments, but it also sends a coordinated message about the university to the community.
“Every campus faces the risk of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing,” said University of Wisconsin, Parkside, President Jack Keating, who believes so strongly in the initiative that he offered his campus as a participant in a pilot program on engagement designed to set an example for other schools to follow. Keating in fact already has appointed a dean of community engagement.
“Various entities on campus are performing good works in their communities, but they do so in silos,” Keating said. “The community-engagement initiative has the capacity to unite them, or at least inform them of what’s going on around the campus, instead of just having the soccer team doing a community initiative on its own.”
Another president, Jay Helman at Western State College of Colorado, was so excited to hear about the engagement theory during the Convention that he immediately began planning how to apply it at his campus. He said he’s already talking with the school’s director of marketing about not only engagement for athletics but also for the institution.
“The idea of the college as the town square resonated with me,” said Helman, who has been president at the Gunnison, Colorado, school since February 2002. “It links closely with what I’ve heard in other national meetings of presidents and others in higher education who talk about the power of the institution to convene. It’s one of the single-most important things we can do as institutions of higher learning — to bring people together on issues. While the athletics piece is different because we’re not convening about an issue, we are using what is a natural front door to our town square through our athletics events. I find it to be fertile ground.”
Putting engagement to work
Such presidential support and understanding of the concept is key. But the athletics practitioners also need to engage in engagement.
Mars Hill’s Riggins said many of his peers “get it,” though some still struggle with the engagement/service distinction. Riggins has an advantage in that regard, since he was involved in discussions from the start as a member of the advisory group, but he said it doesn’t take long for an athletics director’s head to start filling with ideas once the light comes on.
“We’re a small, rural community, and this thing is tailor made for us,” he said. “First, we’re thinking how this makes us more of a community on campus. How do we make athletics fit better with the biology department and the drama department and our band? And then how do we place ourselves in an advantageous position of bringing our larger community into that picture as well?”
For one, Riggins said, schools should use the initiative to create a better sense of community within the confines of the campus — because a campus that is not a community itself will have a difficult time selling the community concept beyond the campus. And two, he said, be aggressive in taking that concept to the community.
Riggins’ peer at the University of Indianapolis, Sue Willey, is thinking along the same lines, even though she’s at an urban school. For her institution, she said, the initial thrust will be a greater coordination and understanding of what is happening on campus.
“Our motto here is ‘Education for Service,’ so the community-engagement piece fits right into that mission, as it will for most institutions,” Willey said. “We’ll be asking the community what they need from us. We need to connect with our community-service department on campus. Before we can do any better, the right hand and left hand need to get together.”
Presidents already are figuring out the institutional benefits of such a coordinated approach.
“By getting the athletes involved in the community, it gets the community involved with the athletes,” Keating said. “It helps people begin to know the university in new ways that they may not have recognized before, and perhaps they begin to attend different university events after having come to our athletics events, whether those be games or community-engagement efforts.”
The engagement piece, said Western State President Helman, is to find ways through the town square concept for people to be exposed to what Division II campuses are all about.
“The athletics venue is one of the principal ways in which people feel least threatened on a college campus,” he said. “It’s less intimidating for many than to invite them to a lecture or a symposium. We do the latter all the time, but this idea of engagement through athletics helps people develop a comfort level with the college and feel part of the town square.
“People want to be closer and feel some sense of familiarity and ownership with members of the team. On our smaller campuses, they can get that feeling of a relationship with the student-athletes and coaches and then by extension the campus itself. With that in place, we become more effective ‘conveners’ on other kinds of issues. I think we’re on to something that hasn’t been tapped.”
Now that the spigot has been primed, perhaps the community-engagement ideas will begin flowing as much as the good will that prompted the proposal in the first place.
That’s natural for a constituency already strapped for time and most likely already committed to one or more community-service projects in a given year.
As difficult as it has been for presidents and athletics practitioners to understand that community engagement doesn’t have to translate into “more work,” it’s imperative for student-athletes to understand it as well.
Megan Burd, chair of the Division II Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, said not to worry.
“Division II already takes great initiative within the realm of community service,” she said, “but now we have the platform to integrate both service within the community and the engagement of the community on campus. I think that the two are very closely connected and the transition to include a focus on engagement will be a relatively easy one for student-athletes.”
Burd’s predecessor as chair, John Semarero, said the key is for student-athletes not to think of engagement as having to do something else. Sometimes service is seen as a requirement, he said. With engagement, it’s more about what’s happening on campus.
“For example, some basketball teams during the winter break are doing things to attract people to their games while the student body is on break,” he said. Semarero said that is in student-athletes’ best interests, since they don’t want to play to an empty gym. “Engagement also helps the team gain exposure and highlights all aspects of the student-athlete experience, not only on the fields and courts, but in the classroom and in the community,” he said. “It puts a face on the student-athletes and the team.”
Carey Demos, a SAAC member and participant on the Division II Community Advisory Group, said SAAC understands the difference between a long-lasting, need-oriented community engagement and a one-time community-service project. She expects other student-athletes to comprehend that, too.
Demos said student-athletes also understand that community engagement will directly benefit the athletes in return.
“By reaching community needs and bringing people to congregate on campus, the athletes will have more fans and community support during their athletics competition,” she said. “Student-athletes are excited about this two-way community support because in the end, everyone benefits.”
Already, all 22 conferences have arranged to send representatives to the train-the-trainer workshop April 18-20 in Denver. That’s important, since it will set the stage for trickle-down learning.
“The April piece will be important because we’ll have every conference represented and an opportunity to provide thoughts on best applications,” said Mars Hill College Athletics Director David Riggins. “That should produce ambassadors from each conference who can tout the piece as something that moves the division forward, and now here are some practical applications that help individual schools.”
Combined with a comprehensive Web site that will provide plenty of community-engagement information, including a database of “ideas that work,” the workshop will give Division II members a good idea of how community engagement will work to their benefit.
The workshop includes meeting time for the Division II Community Advisory Group and a kick-off reception on the 18th, followed by panels and roundtable discussions the next two days. Among topics are:
Riggins said it will be the first chance for many athletics “practitioners” to understand firsthand what engagement is all about.
“I hope it will snowball and that a year from now I can click on this Web site and find 100 great ideas, and of them 10 that really work for an institution my size and in my locale,” he said. “It’s time for this thing to get rolling.”
A College campuses are economically structured communities. Because of their size, balance and current community involvement, Division II institutions are ideal for extending community engagement to fill the void left by an American economy that no longer generally supports community involvement. Division II schools have the opportunity to establish their campuses as the new “town square” for community residents.
Q How will this initiative be implemented at the campus level?
A Determine if community engagement is already being done. If it is, ask if the athletics department can be better partners in those school-wide efforts. If it isn’t, determine if the chancellor or president would support developing a campus community-engagement strategy with which athletics can assist. Then determine the entities and individuals on campus who should be involved and, through presidential leadership, develop a coordinated effort with those groups.
Q Is there a common definition of “community” that could work for every institution?
A No. The Division II Community Advisory Group can help schools with a process to define their individual communities, but that definition will differ from campus to campus. Right now, some schools think of their communities as the geography in which they recruit student-athletes and students in general.
Q What types of resources are available and how will information be shared?
A The Division II Community Web site (www.diicommunity.org) will launch this spring. The site will include a template for building community-engagement strategies; a dynamic list of ideas that work; a chat area in which schools can communicate with each other about best practices; pictures and video from events that have been successful; and news about new initiatives. Also, the National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators will offer an annual workshop beginning this spring on Division II community-engagement strategies.
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By Gary T. Brown
The NCAA News
The NCAA News
Community engagement is all about geometry in Division II. The division that has used a hexagon in its identity campaign is now circling the wagons around a “town square” initiative that fortifies the triangle connecting campuses, community and alumni.Not bad for a division that two years ago considered itself merely part of a linear progression of NCAA division affiliations. Now the line is straight up the identity chart.
Two breakthroughs helped that occur. First was the resolve from Division II presidents in June 2005 to conceptualize and eventually implement a strategic-positioning platform that identified the division’s six primary characteristics and attributes (learning, passion, balance, resourcefulness, service and sportsmanship — hence, hexagon). Second was the passage of legislation at the Convention last month that allows Division II institutions to live the platform.
Proposal No. 5, which lets schools suspend normal recruiting restrictions when they conduct initiatives that benefit their communities more than themselves, figuratively bulldozes the ivy-covered walls that often seclude colleges from their communities. Now athletics officials don’t need to worry whether their community-engagement events mix coaches and student-athletes with prospects. Plus, they can better integrate their own community efforts with the university’s, thus building stronger campus relationships and promoting the athletics/education link to the community.
The louder emphasis on community engagement is not meant to imply that institutions aren’t already doing it. But Division II Vice President Mike Racy said the engagement initiative is designed to help recognize on a national level the positive efforts in the membership and to provide resources to schools that want to explore different or new ways of engaging their communities.
“By illuminating Division II community-engagement success stories,” Racy said, “we can help shape public perception about Division II membership.”
To be sure, that is the next logical step now that the strategic-positioning platform is an accepted part of the Division II nomenclature. The trick is how to create more success stories.
“Now that we know we’re headed in this direction — the membership has said it is a good concept — the last piece of the puzzle is to educate members as to how they can apply it,” said Mars Hill College Athletics Director David Riggins, who served on an advisory team that shepherded the community-engagement proposal to fruition.That body, the Division II Community Advisory Group, assembled a comprehensive report that will help in that regard (available at www.ncaa.org under “Legislation and Governance,” then “Division II,” “Strategic Positioning” and “Community Engagement Report”). But perhaps even more enlightening will be an April workshop designed to provide Division II members with examples of what the engagement initiative is about (see related story on page 19), and a Web site that includes a database of “ideas that work” for institutions to share.
Former Division II Student-Athlete Advisory Committee Chair John Semarero is helping compile the latter, serving as the collection agent to glean what schools already are doing in the engagement realm and categorizing them as a resource for other institutions.
Once the site launches in April, Semarero said users can log on and look for something as specific as an outreach for a soccer team on a Saturday afternoon targeting elderly and middle-school children. “You’ll be able to click those categories and see what other institutions have done,” he said. “We’ll provide contact names and other information to get started.”
Semarero said his goal was to get 50 ideas, but the response he’s getting so far makes him confident that he’ll do far better.
Understanding engagement
In many ways, Division II’s passage of the community-engagement initiative required a leap of faith. Most stakeholders understood it was the right action, even though they might not have been absolutely sure how to apply it on their own campuses. Most Division II athletics departments coordinate some kind of outreach or community service that involves their student-athletes, and some have struggled to understand how engagement differs.
Fortunately, Division II has a head start from several advocates who are skilled at explaining the nuances.
“Engagement is about the partnership or relationship between the campus and the community to benefit both through events that allow people to gather and enjoy each other’s company,” Racy said. “Service or outreach is aimed at providing relief or benefit directly to a person or group in need without the purposeful objective to develop relationships and community.”
Because of their size and locales, most Division II institutions are ideally positioned to take advantage of community engagement, since so much of their “persona” relies on community relationships — it makes sense for them to be the town square of their communities. And the good news is that it’s more about communicating and coordinating existing initiatives than it is about adding more.
For example, Division II members say, why not announce upcoming concerts or theater productions at halftimes of athletics events? Why not list the campus events schedule on the athletics Web page? Why not coordinate campus-based engagement efforts under one office? That kind of cross promotion not only sends a positive signal about athletics to the other campus departments, but it also sends a coordinated message about the university to the community.
“Every campus faces the risk of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing,” said University of Wisconsin, Parkside, President Jack Keating, who believes so strongly in the initiative that he offered his campus as a participant in a pilot program on engagement designed to set an example for other schools to follow. Keating in fact already has appointed a dean of community engagement.“Various entities on campus are performing good works in their communities, but they do so in silos,” Keating said. “The community-engagement initiative has the capacity to unite them, or at least inform them of what’s going on around the campus, instead of just having the soccer team doing a community initiative on its own.”
Another president, Jay Helman at Western State College of Colorado, was so excited to hear about the engagement theory during the Convention that he immediately began planning how to apply it at his campus. He said he’s already talking with the school’s director of marketing about not only engagement for athletics but also for the institution.“The idea of the college as the town square resonated with me,” said Helman, who has been president at the Gunnison, Colorado, school since February 2002. “It links closely with what I’ve heard in other national meetings of presidents and others in higher education who talk about the power of the institution to convene. It’s one of the single-most important things we can do as institutions of higher learning — to bring people together on issues. While the athletics piece is different because we’re not convening about an issue, we are using what is a natural front door to our town square through our athletics events. I find it to be fertile ground.”
Putting engagement to work
Such presidential support and understanding of the concept is key. But the athletics practitioners also need to engage in engagement.
Mars Hill’s Riggins said many of his peers “get it,” though some still struggle with the engagement/service distinction. Riggins has an advantage in that regard, since he was involved in discussions from the start as a member of the advisory group, but he said it doesn’t take long for an athletics director’s head to start filling with ideas once the light comes on.
“We’re a small, rural community, and this thing is tailor made for us,” he said. “First, we’re thinking how this makes us more of a community on campus. How do we make athletics fit better with the biology department and the drama department and our band? And then how do we place ourselves in an advantageous position of bringing our larger community into that picture as well?”
For one, Riggins said, schools should use the initiative to create a better sense of community within the confines of the campus — because a campus that is not a community itself will have a difficult time selling the community concept beyond the campus. And two, he said, be aggressive in taking that concept to the community.
Riggins’ peer at the University of Indianapolis, Sue Willey, is thinking along the same lines, even though she’s at an urban school. For her institution, she said, the initial thrust will be a greater coordination and understanding of what is happening on campus.
“Our motto here is ‘Education for Service,’ so the community-engagement piece fits right into that mission, as it will for most institutions,” Willey said. “We’ll be asking the community what they need from us. We need to connect with our community-service department on campus. Before we can do any better, the right hand and left hand need to get together.”Presidents already are figuring out the institutional benefits of such a coordinated approach.
“By getting the athletes involved in the community, it gets the community involved with the athletes,” Keating said. “It helps people begin to know the university in new ways that they may not have recognized before, and perhaps they begin to attend different university events after having come to our athletics events, whether those be games or community-engagement efforts.”
The engagement piece, said Western State President Helman, is to find ways through the town square concept for people to be exposed to what Division II campuses are all about.
“The athletics venue is one of the principal ways in which people feel least threatened on a college campus,” he said. “It’s less intimidating for many than to invite them to a lecture or a symposium. We do the latter all the time, but this idea of engagement through athletics helps people develop a comfort level with the college and feel part of the town square.
“People want to be closer and feel some sense of familiarity and ownership with members of the team. On our smaller campuses, they can get that feeling of a relationship with the student-athletes and coaches and then by extension the campus itself. With that in place, we become more effective ‘conveners’ on other kinds of issues. I think we’re on to something that hasn’t been tapped.”
Now that the spigot has been primed, perhaps the community-engagement ideas will begin flowing as much as the good will that prompted the proposal in the first place.
Student-athletes prepared to carry community flag
Imagine being a student-athlete and hearing for the first time about athletics departments wanting to step up their community-engagement initiatives. Forgive them if their reaction is, “Oh, man, another service project we have to do.”That’s natural for a constituency already strapped for time and most likely already committed to one or more community-service projects in a given year.
As difficult as it has been for presidents and athletics practitioners to understand that community engagement doesn’t have to translate into “more work,” it’s imperative for student-athletes to understand it as well.
Megan Burd, chair of the Division II Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, said not to worry.“Division II already takes great initiative within the realm of community service,” she said, “but now we have the platform to integrate both service within the community and the engagement of the community on campus. I think that the two are very closely connected and the transition to include a focus on engagement will be a relatively easy one for student-athletes.”
Burd’s predecessor as chair, John Semarero, said the key is for student-athletes not to think of engagement as having to do something else. Sometimes service is seen as a requirement, he said. With engagement, it’s more about what’s happening on campus.
“For example, some basketball teams during the winter break are doing things to attract people to their games while the student body is on break,” he said. Semarero said that is in student-athletes’ best interests, since they don’t want to play to an empty gym. “Engagement also helps the team gain exposure and highlights all aspects of the student-athlete experience, not only on the fields and courts, but in the classroom and in the community,” he said. “It puts a face on the student-athletes and the team.”
Carey Demos, a SAAC member and participant on the Division II Community Advisory Group, said SAAC understands the difference between a long-lasting, need-oriented community engagement and a one-time community-service project. She expects other student-athletes to comprehend that, too.Demos said student-athletes also understand that community engagement will directly benefit the athletes in return.
“By reaching community needs and bringing people to congregate on campus, the athletes will have more fans and community support during their athletics competition,” she said. “Student-athletes are excited about this two-way community support because in the end, everyone benefits.”
April workshop should clarify initiatives
Division II has become quite skilled lately at taking on new initiatives in a coordinated approach. That characteristic will be in play again this spring when the division co-sponsors a community-engagement workshop with the National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators.Already, all 22 conferences have arranged to send representatives to the train-the-trainer workshop April 18-20 in Denver. That’s important, since it will set the stage for trickle-down learning.
“The April piece will be important because we’ll have every conference represented and an opportunity to provide thoughts on best applications,” said Mars Hill College Athletics Director David Riggins. “That should produce ambassadors from each conference who can tout the piece as something that moves the division forward, and now here are some practical applications that help individual schools.”
Combined with a comprehensive Web site that will provide plenty of community-engagement information, including a database of “ideas that work,” the workshop will give Division II members a good idea of how community engagement will work to their benefit.
The workshop includes meeting time for the Division II Community Advisory Group and a kick-off reception on the 18th, followed by panels and roundtable discussions the next two days. Among topics are:
- Addressing your community’s needs.
- Understanding your university’s assets, including athletics.
- Involving athletics in you university’s community-engagement strategy.
- Role of the conference office in helping campuses establish “family-friendly” environments.
Riggins said it will be the first chance for many athletics “practitioners” to understand firsthand what engagement is all about.
“I hope it will snowball and that a year from now I can click on this Web site and find 100 great ideas, and of them 10 that really work for an institution my size and in my locale,” he said. “It’s time for this thing to get rolling.”
FAQs on community engagement
Q Why should Division II invest time and resources in a national campaign that is targeted to the grass-roots level and focused on enhancing intercollegiate athletics by engaging institutions and their communities?A College campuses are economically structured communities. Because of their size, balance and current community involvement, Division II institutions are ideal for extending community engagement to fill the void left by an American economy that no longer generally supports community involvement. Division II schools have the opportunity to establish their campuses as the new “town square” for community residents.
Q How will this initiative be implemented at the campus level?
A Determine if community engagement is already being done. If it is, ask if the athletics department can be better partners in those school-wide efforts. If it isn’t, determine if the chancellor or president would support developing a campus community-engagement strategy with which athletics can assist. Then determine the entities and individuals on campus who should be involved and, through presidential leadership, develop a coordinated effort with those groups.
Q Is there a common definition of “community” that could work for every institution?
A No. The Division II Community Advisory Group can help schools with a process to define their individual communities, but that definition will differ from campus to campus. Right now, some schools think of their communities as the geography in which they recruit student-athletes and students in general.
Q What types of resources are available and how will information be shared?
A The Division II Community Web site (www.diicommunity.org) will launch this spring. The site will include a template for building community-engagement strategies; a dynamic list of ideas that work; a chat area in which schools can communicate with each other about best practices; pictures and video from events that have been successful; and news about new initiatives. Also, the National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators will offer an annual workshop beginning this spring on Division II community-engagement strategies.
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