The Foreign Student Records Consultants, a group that has been convening for more than 20 years, met for the final time February 18-19 in Santa Barbara, California, before the group will be transformed into an NCAA committee.

Five members of the seven-person group, including chair Cliff Sjogren, Joel Slocum, Stan Berry, Jim Haas and Gary Hopkins, have been involved since the consultants first formed. Three others have contributed more than 25 combined years of service, including Roberta Hopkins, Barbara Maryak and Helen Burland.

Expertise in foreign student admissions brought the group together 20 years ago to create guidelines for recruiting athletes from other countries.

"The group has been dedicated," said Dan Dutcher, NCAA chief of staff for Division III and former liaison to the group. "They also are very well-respected among their peers in the international admissions community. Many of them are the national or world experts regarding the education system of particular foreign countries or regions of the world."

Starting without any academic standards for foreign student admissions, the committee authored what is now the Guide to International Academic Standards for Athletics Eligibility, a publication that includes more than 340 pages detailing academic scales of comparison and information for more than 150 countries.

"The group's primary focus back then was to develop, on a country-by-country basis, academic standards that were equivalent to the NCAA's initial-eligibility requirements, and to publish those standards in the guide," Dutcher said. "Those requirements included the equivalent of secondary school 'graduation,' and core-curriculum/grade-point averages for each country. In that era, their work really went hand-in-hand with the apparent growth of the participation of foreign nationals in NCAA athletics. At the same time, membership and public interest initial-eligibility standards grew."

Today, about two percent of all athletes who register with the NCAA Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse are potential foreign student-athletes from more than 100 countries.

At their final meeting, the consultants reviewed current information and added five countries, including Albania, Senegal, Tunisia, Lithuania and Estonia, for the first time in the 2000 edition of the guide.

"The last two meetings the group has really done a country-by-country review to verify ce

rtificates and grade scales for accuracy from Albania to Zimbabwe," said Lisa Roesler, NCAA membership services representative and current liaison to the consultants.

A committee made up of representatives of NCAA institutions will be formed over the coming months and the members of the consultants group will rotate off the committee gradually to help with continuity.

The 2000-01 Guide to International Academic Standards for Athletics Eligibility will be available in late April.