National Collegiate Athletic Association

NCAA News Archive - 2010

back to 2010 | Back to NCAA News Archive Index

Jun 16, 2010 9:12:19 AM

Division II chancellors and presidents convened for their second Summit in 2007 in San Diego.

The Division II Chancellors and Presidents Summit series is a unique approach to NCAA decision-making that has proven highly effective for Division II.

Division II remains the only NCAA membership classification to assemble chancellors and presidents apart from the NCAA Convention for the purpose of discussing athletically related issues. As in the past, about half of all Division II chancellors and presidents are expected to participate in the Summit, which will be conducted Friday and Saturday in Indianapolis.

"The fact that about 150 college presidents will take time from their summer schedules for this meeting speaks volumes about their commitment to Division II," said Presidents Council chair Drew Bogner, president of Molloy College. "The previous meetings have led to important actions such as the strategic-positioning platform and elevating the value of Division II. I expect this Summit will be just as productive."

The 2010 Summit will focus on strategies to maintain the "Life in the Balance" legislative changes, Division II's strategic growth, academics and life skills, and tools to help presidents better position their athletics programs.

The first Summit was conducted June 25-26, 2005, and must be regarded as a landmark event in Division II history. At that time, Division II found itself increasingly destabilized by the loss of marquee members, mostly to Division I.

"We must work on our own identity and get out of the shadow of Division I," said Eddie N. Moore, then president of Virginia State University.

Most significantly, the presidents heard a research report from Jon and Peter Orszag (Peter is now director of the federal Office of Management and Budget) on the finances of Division II and on the financial ramifications of moving from Division II to I.

Fortified by the data, the presidents pushed hard to strengthen the Division II identity. The discussion eventually led to the development of the Division II strategic-positioning platform, but at the time of the 2005 Summit, the discussion focused on two topics:

• Should Division II continue to be known as Division II? Many presidents were (and still are) troubled by NCAA nomenclature that appears to outsiders to classify institutions in rank order. "Names send messages," said West Georgia President Beheruz Sethna, "and II has only one message – that it's inferior to Division I." Nothing became of the sentiment to change names, but the subsequent strategic-positioning initiative and related imagery greatly strengthened the Division II identity in the years that followed.
•  For the first time, Division II presidents were advised to pay more attention to the relationship between their athletics program and the communities in which they are located. Media researcher Rich Luker told the presidents that smaller institutions should play to their strength by satisfying an unmet need among Americans for social interaction. "You're missing the point if you think it's about being national and huge," Luker told the presidents.

In a forum at the end of the first meeting, Bogner – who at the time was not involved in the governance structure – praised the Summit for raising awareness but asked for more information about Division II value. While reclassification to Division I was high-profile, Bogner said that a bigger threat could be reclassification to Division III and the perceived cost savings from not having to pay athletically related financial aid.

That question became a theme of the 2007 Summit, which was conducted June 23 in San Diego.

At that meeting, the presidents reviewed a preliminary financial study from Hardwick-Day that illustrated the positive effect of athletics − and especially Division II's partial-scholarship model − on enrollment. Pfeiffer President Charles Ambrose, then the Presidents Council chair, also announced the development of an online tool that could help presidents who were considering reclassification decisions.

"In effect, Division II is creating a tool that currently does not exist that benefits current and prospective members," Ambrose said. "For current members, it helps validate that they are in the right place. But it also allows potential members to take their existing revenue and expense projections and test what life might be like in Division II."

Other major topics includes Division II membership issues, especially in the West; a review of the community-engagement philosophy identified at the first Summit; and a division-specific report on the NCAA GOALS and SCORE surveys about student-athlete experiences.

At the 2007 Summit, NCAA President Myles Brand noted the difference in how Division II leaders approached their problems, compared to their first meeting two years earlier.

"Judging from your interactions, you're a different group than you were two years ago," Brand told the presidents. "Even though you have directed outward in terms of engagement, internally the cohesion is remarkable and noticeable. Presidential leadership has brought together diverse thought and built them into a unified whole."