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DII communicators engage in engagement

By David Pickle
NCAA.org

An audience composed mostly of athletics communicators became full partners Thursday in Division II’s community-engagement initiative.

The occasion was the fourth Division II Community-Engagement Workshop, and for this workshop, the emphasis was on communication.

The workshop coincided with ongoing efforts within Division II to encourage sports information professionals to emphasize story-telling, in addition to traditional responsibilities such as statistics and game accounts.

“Are you just the stats person or are you the person telling the Division II story?” Rich Herman, sports information director at Clarion and president of D-2 SIDA, asked the attendees at the beginning of the day.

Some of the nine-hour session was spent reinforcing the purpose of Division II’s community-engagement initiative – mainly to have Division II athletics programs act as a conduit between the institutions and the communities in which they are located.

Rich Luker, the consultant who had the original vision for community engagement, lamented that the distinction between “service” and “engagement” still hasn’t been made clear. “Service,” though valuable, is more akin to work, he said; “engagement” suggests large elements of kindness and fun.

That concept was reinforced by former Chaminade President Kent Keith, who drew parallels between community engagement and servant leadership.

Keith, now the CEO of the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, said Division II’s efforts with community engagement are “good for the student, good for the university, good for the community and, ultimately, good for the nation.”

Like Luker, Keith drew a sharp distinction between “community service” and “servant leadership.”

“If you clean a park,” he said, “that’s community service. If your student-athletes clean a park and maybe write a paper about it, that’s service learning. But if they make an effort to find out what the community needs by talking to people and then fixing the park to meet their needs, that’s servant leadership.”

CoSIDA Executive Director John Humenik attended the event and came away impressed.

“It was enjoyable to be exposed to different groups,” he said. “It wasn’t all about the conference and the school. It was all about the division and what’s good about Division II. That’s so refreshing.”

For his part, Herman said the workshop represented a huge opportunity for communication professionals.

“As strategic communicators, we were a partner in this seminar,” he said. “I feel like Division II’s leadership has had a vision about where it wants to go and now we’re a part of that. I know we’ll form a good team.”