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Publish date: Oct 18, 2010

New structure enhances inclusion effort

By Gary Brown
NCAA.org

When the NCAA national office announced structure changes earlier this month that included the diversity and inclusion unit, it raised a question about the Association’s 20-year commitment to the initiative.

Bernard Franklin

The answer is that under new NCAA President Mark Emmert, the Association resolves to make athletics even more inclusive. That will be accomplished through new leadership, renewed presidential oversight and a strategic focus on not only diversifying opportunities but also creating inclusive environments that build a better business case for intercollegiate athletics.

Leading the charge is seven-year NCAA Executive Vice President Bernard Franklin, whom Emmert appointed as the Association’s chief inclusion officer in the new structure. Internally, the inclusion initiatives are on reporting lines that go directly to Emmert while external membership oversight comes straight from the Executive Committee. Both position diversity and inclusion squarely as a presidential priority.

Goal: inclusive climate

The idea of changing the culture surrounding diversity and inclusion is pragmatic for the NCAA’s Bernard Franklin, but it’s also personal.

When NCAA President Mark Emmert appointed the former Virginia Union president and current NCAA executive vice president as the Association’s chief inclusion officer earlier this month, Franklin reflected on how his own experiences help shape his new role.

“I’ve been in situations where I’ve been the first person of color – that person who has broken the color line in some professional situations – and I’ve also been in situations in which I was the only person of color,” he said. “Some of those were good experiences, but some were not. And those that were not were because the climate or the culture had not been prepared to deal with someone who was different.”

That inclusive “climate” is what Franklin and his staff at the NCAA national office want to address.

“When we start talking fundamentally about what’s different about this new structure, that’s what it is,” he said. “We want to look at climate and culture. And if you ask what the success is, you start by assessing the current climate and then, based on those findings, figure out what you can do in terms of programs and services to change it and then measure the progress.”

Part of that assessment, Franklin said, is the same kind of numbers game the Association has been playing for two decades. When the NCAA Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee and the NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics were established in the late 1980s, the numbers were woeful and the concept of diversity was in its infancy.

Through relentless awareness and innovative programming, the numbers have nudged upward. Gender balance and ethnicity have improved both on the fields and off, though not enough to let up on the gas, Franklin said. Still, the NCAA’s approach needs to be as diverse as the culture it wants to promulgate.

“Up to now, the focus on diversity primarily has been about increasing the numbers – which is important – I don’t argue with that,” Franklin said. “But it’s not enough to bring folks in who are different and say that’s it. It’s not good enough to say that 30 percent of your workforce is a diverse population. What about the climate? What about the environment? How has that changed? That’s what the next step is for our membership – we have to create inclusive environments, whether you have groups of three or three thousand.”

To do that, Franklin and his staff plan to appear more in front of conference boards and presidents and chancellors to carry that message.

“I believe the membership is receptive to this approach,” Franklin said. “The more we can engage presidents and chancellors, the more that culture change will come about.”

“President Emmert has emphasized from the day he was selected for the job that diversity and inclusion remain a priority for the Association,” Franklin said. “We believe we now have the right structure in place to accomplish that intent.”

Franklin said the new structure offers three primary enhancements:

The new unit will focus more on how stronger policy development can inform decision-making in terms of creating more inclusive environments.
The new structure will enable the Association to be far more aggressive in engaging presidents and chancellors in discourse surrounding inclusion issues.
The NCAA will collaborate with other national organizations and associations that either have diversity and inclusion as their primary mission or, like the NCAA, have some aspect of diversity and inclusion in their core principles. The organizations can brainstorm about best practices, processes and strategies to increase diversity.

The new structure combines efforts that had similar intents but were housed in different units before now. Under the new structure, gender and minority representation issues will be combined in what is being re-titled the “Inclusion Initiative,” with a director of minority inclusion and a director of gender inclusion, both of whom report to Franklin. The restructuring resulted in the elimination of the position of vice president for diversity and inclusion, which Charlotte Westerhaus occupied for six years. She left the Association October 1.

“We would not be where we are today with our diversity and inclusion effort were it not for the work Charlotte put toward the effort in her six years here,” Franklin said. “She helped develop new programs and enhance existing ones to further the membership’s understanding of why including people from diverse backgrounds and cultures benefits athletics. Now, we are ready to take diversity and inclusion to a new level.”

That new level, Franklin said, is a dual approach that places a premium on the culture surrounding inclusion rather than just the numbers.

He said that in the past, the NCAA has tended to focus on “the pipeline factor” and preparing individuals from diverse backgrounds to assume leadership roles within intercollegiate athletics. That devotion to numbers in many ways came from necessity, since the number of women and minorities in leadership position has been so low.

But while the NCAA developed programs and causes that helped improve those numbers, Franklin is calling for a paradigm shift in the way people think of inclusion.

“We’ve done a tremendous job with the pipeline mentality,” he said, “but our overall approach will be more bifurcated than singular. We want to begin to work with our membership on the whole issue of climate – how do we create more diverse climates and environments that will undergird the success of increased diversity?

“If we can focus on that, the increase in numbers (from the pipeline) will naturally follow suit because people will realize that they need to have more diversity in their decision-making processes because it helps us make better decisions. That’s where you’ll see some of the fundamental differences moving forward.”

To that end, Franklin said the new structure also will focus on diversity issues that go beyond gender and race, including disabilities, sexual orientation and religion, among others.

The national office will continue to devote resources to diversity programming through a new Student-Athlete Affairs and Leadership Development group (formerly Educational Affairs). While that unit will administer and build on existing programs such as the coaches academies, leadership institutes and the Fellows program, the Inclusion Initiative will focus more on policy and helping NCAA member schools foster more inclusive environments.

That may result in a more streamlined and efficient diversity effort within the NCAA governance structure, as well. Franklin said thought already is being given to combining the three current groups that monitor diversity and inclusion – the Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee, the Committee on Women’s Athletics, and the Executive Committee’s Subcommittee on Gender and Diversity – into a collective governance voice that would report to the Executive Committee. Those groups are being asked for feedback on whether a more collective approach would translate into a more efficient and perhaps even stronger and effective approach.

In all, Franklin said, the structure changes in the national office and the potential changes in the governance structure will amplify the Association’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.