Indiana University, Bloomington, recognized NCAA President Myles Brand with an honorary doctor of humane letters degree as part of its Honors Convocation on Sunday.

Brand served as the university’s president from 1994 to 2002. He has led the NCAA since January 2003. Indiana President Michael A. McRobbie bestowed the honor.

“As a leader he has a remarkable ability to inspire confidence,” McRobbie said in his speech. “It can truly be said of him, as it was of the great British Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder, ‘No one left his presence who did not feel the braver.’ ”

Indiana Provost and Executive Vice President Karen Hanson, who was Brand’s colleague in the department of philosophy and chair of the department during much of Brand’s presidency, said that the Honors Convocation was a particularly appropriate venue for honoring Brand.

“Myles Brand’s commitment to academic excellence helped propel IU to new levels of distinction during his tenure as president, and that commitment has been manifest throughout his career,” she said. “He is now, as president of the NCAA, such a strong voice for the integration of academic and athletic excellence, a strong advocate for the academic interests of the student-athlete.”

Brand led Indiana through a period of remarkable growth as the university’s 16th president, including record enrollments and national leadership in information technology and the life sciences. Under Brand’s leadership, Indiana established the nation’s first school of informatics, doubled research funding, and increased the size of its endowment four-fold and the number of endowed chairs and professors three-fold. He developed the Central Indiana Life Sciences Initiative and consolidated University and Methodist Hospitals in Indianapolis to create Clarian Health Partners.

As chief executive of the NCAA, Brand has presided over the most comprehensive academic reform package for intercollegiate athletics in recent history, refocusing attention on the academic achievement and retention of student-athletes.

Before coming to Indiana, Brand was president of the University of Oregon from 1989-94 and was an administrator and professor of philosophy at The Ohio State University, the University of Arizona and the University of Illinois at Chicago. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Rochester.

For a report from WTHR TV in Indianapolis, click here.