The call to action issued during the inaugural NCAA Symposium on Women of Color in Intercollegiate Athletics earlier this year continues to resonate as the results of roundtable discussions during the event are now available online.

One of the highlights of the 2008 NCAA Convention in Nashville, the symposium played host to women and men from a variety of racial, divisional, sport, administrative and coaching backgrounds. After comments from panelists, including ESPN's Sage Steele, that focused on three primary areas – fostering leadership in athletics administration and coaching, providing insight into campus and cultural issues affecting student-athletes, and addressing perceptions and realities of Title IX for women of color – participants divided into breakout session to discuss each topic.

The NCAA’s diversity and inclusion staff, which sponsored the symposium, has posted the recommendations, ideas and suggestions generated by each breakout session online.

As part of the recommendations from participants who focused on leadership in administration and coaching, that group suggested expanding the dialogue to decision-makers and using current platforms to collectively and collaboratively push forward women of color.

The session related to student-athlete and media issues offer recommendations on a range of topics including ways to encourage young women of color to get involved in broadcast media, ways to better showcase and marketing female student-athletes of color, strategies for attracting female athletes of color to historically underrepresented sports and ways to diversity the student-athlete population at HBCUs.

Participants in the third session – Title IX and student-athletes of color – felt the most immediate action steps included the need to communicate ideas to NCAA leaders, establish a project team, develop a best-practices model and focus on retaining coaches and athletes of color. 

Each group’s recommendations were reported at the close of the symposium and results also will be shared with the NCAA Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee.