Division II Presidents Council Chair Stephen Jordan in his “state of Division II” discussion with The NCAA News earlier this month said one of the priorities for the division this year was to increase its focus on opportunities for women in athletics.

The Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference is doing its part for the administrative ranks by agreeing to amend league legislation to fortify the role of the senior woman administrator at GLIAC campuses.

This fall, the GLIAC executive council unanimously passed legislation requiring a league-member’s senior woman administrator to be part of that school’s senior management team. In other words, the SWA should be either an assistant, associate or senior associate athletics director with broad-based decision-making responsibilities within the athletics department. The legislation further says that GLIAC SWAs not thusly titled should matriculate into one of those positions within three years of initial appointment as the SWA.

“Unless the person designated as the SWA is an administrator, she does not assume the role that is intended in the designation,” said Tiffin Faculty Athletics Representative Bonnie Tiell, who helped spearhead the proposal. “While ‘SWA’ is not a title or job description, the person designated as the SWA needs to have the administrative capacity to accomplish what the designation was meant to do, which is to get female decision-makers into the governance process.”

NCAA legislation regarding the SWA says the designee should be the highest-ranking female administrator in the department. In cases where the athletics director is a woman, she can designate the second highest-ranking female as the SWA.

Tiell, chair of marketing and sport management at Tiffin, did her own research revealing a dearth of administrative-level SWAs in Divisions II and III. In 2007, Tiell queried 574 athletics staff designated as SWAs and found that about 56 percent of Division II and 47 percent of Division III respondents did not have jobs positioning them as part of the department’s senior management team. Many of those SWAs were compliance officers, coaches or administrative assistants – all important cogs in department operations, but not typically involved in strategic department-wide decisions.

“While the GLIAC amendment is an action we believed was appropriate for us as a conference to take, we hope it also is a statement that rises to a more national level about the need to enhance opportunities for women in athletics administration,” said Michigan Tech Athletics Director Suzanne Sanregret, a member of the GLIAC executive council. “Given the emphasis Division II has placed on gender equity, especially through Dr. Jordan’s call for action, I hope this change at a local level becomes more widespread.”

Tiell said GLAIC members expressed only modest concerns when the legislation was being considered. She said the common argument against having the SWA automatically assume a title as an assistant or associate AD is that designees in other jobs often are not prepared or are too new for a decision-making role. Some departments also are too small to add an administrator position.

But the GLIAC executive council saw an opportunity to provide leadership in this regard, Tiell said.

“The GLIAC has set a precedent now by helping ensure gender representation on departmental senior management teams by having the SWAs be identified as true administrators,” she said. “We understand that the person designated as the SWA sometimes doesn’t have the skills necessary to be part of the senior management team as an assistant or associate athletics director, but giving them three years to grow into those positions holds the school accountable for developing women as leaders in the department.”

Tiell said she hopes other conferences will follow the GLIAC lead if they face similar situations with their SWA designations. She also did not discount the idea of sponsoring a division-wide proposal if other conferences express interest.

“Student-athletes don’t recognize people at in non-administrative roles as decision-makers, but they do recognize that assistant and associate ADs have responsibilities for the entire athletics department, just as the SWA should,” she said. “It’s important to ensure that the designation accomplishes what it was meant to do.”