Former NCAA President Myles Brand will be honored posthumously at the NCAA Convention in January with the 2010 NCAA President’s Gerald R. Ford Award.

The Ford Award, created and first presented by Brand in 2004, honors an individual who has continually provided significant leadership as an advocate for intercollegiate athletics over the course of a career.

NCAA Interim President Jim Isch will present the award to Brand’s wife, Peg, on January 14 at the opening business session of the Convention in Atlanta.

“Myles’ impact on higher education and intercollegiate athletics was significant and profound,” said Isch. “He clearly was the embodiment of what the Ford Award honors. His unwavering commitment to the student-athlete experience resulted in tremendous progress for the Association that we had not seen before his presidency. He worked to ensure that the values of higher education and intercollegiate athletics were preserved and that they would direct our future actions.”

Brand, the first university president to serve as the NCAA’s chief executive, was a champion of academic reform, presidential leadership and student-athlete well-being during his nearly seven-year tenure at the NCAA. He was named to the position in January 2003 after having served as president at Indiana since 1994 and at Oregon from 1989 through 1994. He died September 16 from pancreatic cancer at the age of 67.

From the first weeks of the NCAA presidency, Brand was a champion for the student-athlete, dedicated to enhancing the academic environment and eliminating the phrase “dumb jock” from the public’s perception. His commitment to academic excellence changed the culture of college sports to emphasize the importance of classroom performance and competitive success.

More than just a casual observer of progress, Brand was actively committed to advancing fairness and equal opportunity throughout intercollegiate athletics, calling for more patient and thorough hiring practices for athletics administrators and coaches. He called the lack of ethnic minority football head coaches leading Division I Football Bowl Subdivision teams “simply unjustifiable.”

He also declared that “presidential control of intercollegiate athletics is essential,” and developed mechanisms for encouraging presidents not only to practice control over athletics operations but also to provide leadership in establishing a proper place for sports in the academic missions of universities and colleges.

Brand’s other administrative posts included provost and vice president for academic affairs at Ohio State (1986-89), coordinating dean at the College of Arts and Sciences at Arizona (1985-86), dean of the faculty of social and behavioral sciences at Arizona (1983-86), director of Arizona’s Cognitive Science Program (1982-85), head of the department of philosophy at Arizona (1981-83) and chair of the philosophy department at Illinois-Chicago (1972-80). He began his career in the department of philosophy at Pittsburgh in 1967.

Brand served on the executive committee of the board of directors of the Association of American Universities and as board chair (1999-2000). In addition, he was a member of the board of directors (1992-97) and executive committee (1994-97) of the American Council on Education. He also was a member of the board of directors of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges (1995-98) and served as a board member of the American Philosophical Association and of the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development, the umbrella organization for Internet2.

His academic research investigated the nature of human action. His work focused on intention, desire, belief and other cognitive states, as well as deliberation and practical reasoning, planning and general goal-directed activity. He also wrote extensively on various topics in higher education, such as tenure and undergraduate education.

This is the seventh year the NCAA has presented the Ford Award. Billie Jean King, tennis great and champion for social change and equality, was last year’s recipient. Other winners have been Notre Dame President Emeritus Theodore Hesburgh, former Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics chair William Friday, former U.S. Sen. Birch Bayh, former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, former Iowa women’s Athletics Director Christine Grant, and former NCAA membership President James Frank.

Gerald R. Ford was the 38th president of the United States. He played football at Michigan, where he participated on national championship teams in 1932 and 1933.