Jim Johnson remembers well the bad old days, back when active NCAA membership was achieved through a form-driven, waiver-ridden, education-deficient process.

In 1994, Johnson was compliance officer for Tarleton State University, then an NAIA member seeking to move its intercollegiate athletics program to the NCAA. No NCAA-sponsored compliance orientation was available for Tarleton State administrators, and there certainly was nothing approaching the four-year educational assessment program that is expected of today's prospective members.

As Johnson sat in a San Antonio hotel and awaited the NCAA decision on Tarleton State's application, he contemplated how little he knew about what was required of an NCAA member.

"You filled out the application, sent it in and the NCAA sent you a Manual and an ISSG and said 'good luck,' " said Johnson, who later served on the NCAA staff as the Division II governance liaison before leaving in 2002.

The process wasn't quite that easy, but it wasn't much more demanding.

Tarleton State was approved as a Division II active member the morning of January 11, 1994. That afternoon, the NCAA approved a provisional-member classification that, for the first time, required institutions to complete a three-year process to attain active membership.

To that point, an institution had only to certify that it had complied with the appropriate criteria for its desired division for the previous two years. "In some cases, that notification is the first official communication that the institution has with the national office," said Chuck Lindemenn, then athletics director at Humboldt State University, as he introduced legislation to establish the three-year provisional period.

In fact, prospective institutions most often could not demonstrate that they had met all NCAA membership criteria. No less than 97 percent of new members in Division II from 1992 to 1996 were granted membership-requirement waivers from the Division II Steering Committee, Lindemenn said.

While the 1994 creation of an Association-wide provisional program was an important first step, Division II built on the idea in 1997 when it extended its own provisional-member process to four years and added a strong educational-assessment requirement that stresses presidential involvement. In 2002, Division II strengthened its membership requirements and also added an exploratory year on to the front end of the provisional process.

While no system can deal perfectly with every situation, Division II appears to have found an approach that provides non-NCAA institutions with access to membership while at the same time assuring existing members that new members must make a significant commitment to joining the Association.

"The changes we made and the effort to better educate and better prepare members has been invaluable," said Dave Brunk, chair of the Division II Membership Committee and commissioner of the Northeast-10 Conference. "I really feel that we now have reached the mark where the provisional members for every year of the process are getting the utmost in education and preparation to get them ready to become a viable member of Division II."

In that regard, the distinction with the era preceding the mid-1990s is evident. "They voted you in and you were immediately an active member," Johnson said. "You went home in the afternoon and were expected to know and follow all the rules."

That contrasts with the recent experience of Margaret Mary Fitzpatrick, president of St. Thomas Aquinas College, which became an active member in 2002-03 after completing a four-year process that emphasized presidential involvement.

"You go to sessions that are specifically for presidents," said Fitzpatrick, who is completing her first year on the Division II Presidents Council. "You go to sessions that help you look at different issues -- whether they are diversity issues, compliance issues or whatever -- to learn. The process gives you the opportunity to interact with other presidents of your level school. All of that made the educational-assessment process very important."

Mike Racy, vice-president for Division II, said that the emphasis on presidential involvement has succeeded because it has highlighted real-world circumstances.

"Never before had we sent a message to presidents about what their role in the NCAA would be," he said. "Now they participate in orientation sessions for each year of the four-year period. I was at one session last year, and the presidents were really into a discussion about institutional control, talking about hypothetical circumstances and what would constitute a finding."

Compliance still monitored

While the emphasis on education has been well-received, it hasn't lessened the Membership Committee's gatekeeper responsibility.

Because so much rides on the annual reports that are submitted for each year of the four-year program, the committee has created a comprehensive process that ensures thorough review.

Each annual report is a demanding document. For every year of provisional membership, applicants are required, among other things, to provide squad lists for every sport; schedules, results and won-lost records for every sport; number and dates of competitions and dates; and financial equivalencies and the number of participants for every sport. In addition, the CEO is responsible for signing off on a form that asks if the institution is complying with a variety of Division II requirements, such as the five-sport, three-season rule or whether it has a faculty athletics representative position or a student-athlete advisory committee. It is asked if it has a senior woman administrator. If any of the answers is "no," the institution is asked to provide an action plan, complete with timelines, for remedying the problem.

To review these reports, Brunk said the committee divides into smaller working groups, which assign responsibilities to individuals members. In July, the working groups assemble in advance of the full committee meeting to discuss findings or concerns. Finally, each working group reports its findings to the full committee, which then conducts an extended discussion of its own.

"Then we take it a step further," Brunk said, "and we conclude our meeting for the day and basically sleep on what the findings were. We might discuss those later on at dinner. But we don't make a decision that very day. We allow the opportunity to sink in.

"That way, we have looked at every report in the same manner. We get back together the next morning and we start going through each individual school, based on what our discussion was the day before to see if there are any changes. We have a good discussion with a good, refreshed committee before we decide whether they proceed to the next year, if they proceed to active status, whether we impose any conditions or whether we make them repeat. I think it's a very fair process."

And it isn't a rubber-stamp process. While the Membership Committee takes no pleasure in requiring a provisional member to repeat a year, it has demonstrated that it is willing to take the tough position when circumstances warrant. Over the last four years, seven institutions have been required to repeat a year of the provisional or reclassifying process.

The most common stumbling blocks involve sports-sponsorship requirements, especially with regard to numbers of participants and contests. But prospective members also can get tripped up by more mundane considerations, such as missing the deadline for submitting the annual report.

"An issue like that kind of raises the red flag," said Brunk, who noted that provisional members are constantly reminded about deadlines. "You know that your report has to be postmarked before June 15 of each year. If that's not done, you wonder about the sincerity of someone wanting to come in and be a good member."

Educate, not regulate

Johnson, who also worked as a liaison to the Membership Committee while on the NCAA staff, said the committee clearly has to be willing to use its authority when necessary. Still, he said it has achieved better success in recent years by emphasizing education over regulation.

"We tried to create a mechanism so the Membership Committee was viewed as helpful and educational rather than regulatory or evaluatory," he said. "People had begun to look at the Membership Committee and say, 'We have these sessions, but they are not really helping us. We have to turn in this annual report, and if they don't like the annual report, they are going to hammer us.' "

As an alternative, the Membership Committee sought to identify teachable moments.

"The committee might say, 'Maybe you had a problem and you didn't meet the minimum-contest standards in all 10 of your sports...you only met it in nine. Three years ago, you would have been repeating. Now, the Membership Committee has the authority to educate you on what happened and to make sure it doesn't happen again. They can go ahead and move you, but they put some conditions on you, like having to do a compliance review the next year."

Of course, the provisional-membership process cannot be viewed as a panacea for rules compliance. One of the most serious infractions cases of the last decade involved a Division II institution that was admitted through the three-year process. But the general feeling seems to be that the approach has yielded a number of solid citizens that are better prepared for membership (see accompanying table). Some go so far as to say that new members understand the rules better than existing members.

"I believe that's true," said Johnson, who operated a compliance-consulting firm after leaving the NCAA (he currently is associate director of athletics at Central Missouri State University). "Those schools, as it relates to sports sponsorship and financial aid equivalencies, know more about NCAA rules than a lot of active members."

Racy said he believes the principal benefit is that existing members can look at new active members and believe with confidence that they belong. As an example, he cited a requirement that prospective members be required to meet sport-sponsorship and financial aid requirements.

"Focusing on those elements sends the right message," he said. "In the past, there may have been a concern that almost any new member was accepted, but that's beginning to change. We feel like we're getting the cream of the crop."

Year-by-year provisional membership requirements

Year One

Chief executive officer orientation meeting

Attend Convention orientation session

Attend NCAA Regional Rules Seminar

Submit first annual report, including completion of the ISSG

Year Two

Complete rules-awareness self-evaluation

Attend educational session at Convention

Attend NCAA Regional Rules Seminar

Submit second annual report

Year Three

Complete self-assessment checklist

Attend educational session at Convention

Attend NCAA Regional Rules Seminar

Submit third annual report, including certification by chief executive officer that the self-assessment checklist has been completed

Year Four

Attend educational session at Convention

Submit completion of provisional activities verification materials

Attend NCAA Regional Rules Seminar and verify completion of provisional member activities

Submit fourth annual report, including certification by chief executive officer that provisional member activities have been completed

Four-year provisional membership classes

Institutions that have earned Division II active membership after completing the four-year provisional-member program:

2002-03

Benedict College

Bloomfield College

Caldwell College

Concordia University (Minnesota)

Converse College

Dallas Baptist University

Dominican College (New York)

Felician College

Georgian Court College

University of Minnesota, Crookston

Northwest Nazarene University

Nova Southeastern University

Ohio Valley College

Seattle University

St. Thomas Aquinas College

(New York)

Teikyo Post University

Tiffin University

2003-04

Goldey-Beacom College

Green Mountain College

Holy Family College

North Greenville College

Nyack College

University of Puerto Rico, Bayamon

University of Puerto Rico, Cayey

University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras

University of the Sciences in Philadelphia