Each May, hundreds of student-athletes from across the country head to Orlando to spend their Memorial Day weekend with strangers, not quite sure why they have been chosen to participate in the NCAA’s National Leadership Conference.

While the student-athletes may not know exactly what they’re doing in the Florida sunshine, the administrators who identified their leadership attributes are quite sure.

These student-athletes will be able to enjoy personal growth due to the conference’s curriculum, and they will forge relationships with fellow student-athletes from Divisions I, II and III. But they also are also certain to leave with a documented plan on how to enhance the environment on their own campus when they return home.

Action plans have not only become an integral part of the national leadership conference experience, but they also are a fundamental element of the five regional leadership conferences that happen throughout each year.

“We want them to leave the conference with a concrete plan. They have to leave with an idea about how they’d like to see things change on their campus,” said Ron Stratten, NCAA vice president for education services. “By the time they’re on their last morning and actualizing their plan, it becomes real.”

After a few days of training, student-athletes generally leave the conference excited and prepared to create change on their respective campuses.

“A lot of student-athletes I see from the start of any conference feel that they’re having a life-changing experience,” said Karen Hjerpe, associate athletics director and senior woman administrator at California University of Pennsylvania. “They’ve thought about things they’ve never thought about before. They feel empowered to go back to campus and start a project.”

Hjerpe served as a facilitator at both Division II Leadership Academies during the 2005-06 school year, and she also has seen the effects of implemented action plans throughout her own campus community.

In 2004, volleyball student-athlete Katie Barker represented California University of Pennsylvania at the national conference. When she returned to campus in the fall, Barker implemented her plan both on and off campus.

Seeing a lack of formal social opportunities on campus, Barker introduced a Toys for Tots holiday dance to the school last December. Not only did the event enhance the social atmosphere on campus, but students filled two trucks with toys for less privileged children.

“The leadership conferences give student-athletes avenues and ideas about how to accomplish things,” Hjerpe said. “They come back empowered to get their goal completed and project done.”

Many student-athletes choose to implement action plans that will directly benefit the campus and surrounding community in an effort to create a more cohesive environment. When Jamie Kressel went back to Washington University in St. Louis after spending three days at the Division III Regional Leadership Conference in Dallas last fall, she returned with a number of ideas that would directly benefit student-athletes, the campus and the St. Louis area.

Kressel, along with fellow student-athletes Neal Griffin and Delanie Martin, titled her action plan “Bridging the Gaps.” The plan was threefold: to improve communication among athletes, create stronger ties between student-athletes and the rest of the campus, and bridge the gaps between student-athletes and the St. Louis community.

“This was our first way of targeting the athletes to bridge the gaps between one another and make us all get to know each other better. Then we can branch out onto the campus and move on to the St. Louis community,” Kressel said.

Upon returning to campus, Kressel discussed with Athletics Director John Schael  the prospects of creating a student-athlete lounge in the athletics center. By the time students had returned from winter break, the lounge was ready for occupancy. With computers, couches and a plasma television, student-athletes from all teams have been socializing at the athletics center all semester.

“The 20 girls on the softball team are best friends. We all live together and do everything with one another,” Kressel said. “We knew the guys on the baseball team, but didn’t know the guys on the swimming team. If you’re going to spend all of this time at the athletics complex, you might as well know all of the teams.”

The lounge has helped break down barriers between teams, and student-athletes now recognize one another on campus and in their classes.

“It’s rewarding to make new friends. When I walk into the lounge and see someone I don’t even know watching television, it makes me happy that we did this,” Kressel said.

In an effort to continue building relationships with fellow student-athletes, Kressel’s action plan called for brother-sister teams to work together on various projects throughout the year. For instance, the team combinations were used in the “Bears for Bears Campaign,” an initiative that helped collect more than 500 teddy bears for patients at three children’s hospitals.

Student-athletes also have begun making weekly trips to an area “Make a Difference” center to work with underprivileged children.

Kressel, Griffin and Martin were able to implement a number of changes to the campus in the last six months, but Kressel promises they are far from done.

“This year has been amazing, but we didn’t get everything done we thought we could. I think we were trying hard to do everything at once,” Kressel said. “The Leadership Conference really gave us the right spark to start something. We’re making improvements and are on the right track. As long as we’re moving forward, that’s fine with me.”

Filling a need

Many action plans focus on creating a more positive experience for all student-athletes, while others have a strong tie to community service. Some highlight a specific need on a particular campus.

Although she was at the same conference as Kressel, Wesleyan College (Georgia) soccer student-athlete Melissa Herndon’s action plan focused on a completely different need. There was never a doubt about what she would target upon her return to the Macon campus: Wesleyan needed an athletic trainer.

“When we got back, the first thing we did was meet with the athletics department. They were excited about it,” Herndon said. “Then we met with the president of the college and she was very receptive. We had her support and I think that got the ball rolling a good bit.”

After some budget dollars were freed up, Wesleyan Director of Athletics Melissa Kelly was able to reallocate resources to create a new position for a full-time athletic trainer. She was thrilled with the action plan her student-athletes chose at the leadership conference.

“I was surprised. I didn’t know our student-athletes realized the void that was there. They’ve never had the college experience before and I didn’t know that they knew we should have an athletic trainer and have that person here on a full-time basis,” Kelly said.

The trainer’s responsibilities will not be limited to treating injuries, but the individual will have other duties as well. The individual will provide health and wellness programming and may even teach in the health and physical education department.

Kelly hopes the trainer will educate student-athletes on how to prepare for athletics competition, which should in turn reduce the incidence of injury.

“I don’t feel as if our athletes are terribly prepared because they don’t have knowledge of general health and actual physical training,” Kelly said. “We hope to be able to address off-the-field stuff as well. The sheer fact that health and safety will be addressed will offer peace of mind to staff, student-athletes and parents. It will help drastically.”

Herndon says the new position is thrilling, but really just sets the stage for other enhancements for the athletics department.

“We felt that if we could get something like an athletic trainer implemented, then that would be something we could build on,” Herndon said.    

Now that the athletics department’s chief need will be addressed before next semester, Herndon has taken a page from Kressel’s book and is starting plans for a student-athlete lounge in Wesleyan’s athletics facility. She will spend the summer in Macon working on her project.

Herndon credits the experience she had in Dallas for her success at Wesleyan.

“The conference absolutely motivated me. I feel like I’ve been lazy for the past two years because I didn’t realize my role and what I could accomplish,” Herndon said. “It lit the fire and inspired me to take on more challenges and do a lot more than what I’d been doing. I felt like we were lagging behind and I know we have the potential. I experienced the weekend, and it’s my responsibility to start things here.”

Lasting leadership

After attending October’s Division I Regional Leadership Conference in Chicago, Ohio University track and field student-athlete Aileen Taylor had no doubt about the plan she would bring back to campus.

“We didn’t even second-guess it, we knew exactly what we wanted to do as soon as they said it,” Taylor said. “Other groups had to think about it, but we knew we had a problem that we needed to fix.”

Upon her return, Taylor led an effort to receive a CHOICES alcohol-education grant from the NCAA. After securing the grant, Taylor and her fellow SAAC members have laid out a plan to change attitudes toward alcohol at Ohio.

“It’s a problem at Ohio and it’s affecting our athletes’ performances, as well as their social behavior. They’re leaders and they can have an influence and make changes occur,” Taylor said. “Our hope is just for improvement and to change the social acceptance. We don’t want drinking to be a positive thing at Ohio. We want people to be responsible for their actions and not think it’s something cool to do because everyone else is doing it.”

In addition to working on an advertising campaign set to debut at football games next fall, Taylor has led an effort to involve Ohio’s coaches in establishing a uniform policy addressing alcohol issues with student-athletes.

Right now, coaches have discretion on how to handle student-athletes who have abused alcohol. Taylor would like to see that change.

“We’re trying to implement rules throughout the whole athletics program. We want all the coaches to agree on one policy,” Taylor said. “We feel like we shouldn’t have to be putting this rule into place, but obviously people are drinking, so there’s a problem.”

The uniform policy would establish a 48-hour rule that would prohibit student-athletes from drinking alcohol in the two days before an athletics competition.

While the leadership conferences are a unique experience for student-athletes attending for the first time, and efforts back on campus aren’t always rewarded with immediate change, administrators say that there is an aggregate effect for schools that have taken advantage of the conference year after year.

“We’re OK with that pebble hitting the water. It doesn’t have to be a boulder. It’s going to have its ripples and we’re going to have an effect,” Stratten said. “If we continue to do that, it’s the third or fifth or seventh year that someone from an institution has come back and it builds after that. We can look around at some of these institutions and start to see some changes.”

At California (Pennsylvania), one student-athlete’s action plan became a staple for the campus community.

“Several years ago, a student-athlete had an idea for a campus cleanup. We’ve incorporated that into April,” Hjerpe said. “It becomes a part of your schedule and it’s easier to coordinate after you’ve done it one time.”

Student-athletes are charged with returning to campus and implementing their action plans, but sometimes, the plans get put on the back burner and never materialize. In order to give student-athletes the best opportunity to see their projects through, conference participants must have remaining eligibility on their campuses.

Stratten says underclassmen didn’t always dominate the leadership conferences.

“When we first started, we invited student-athletes who had demonstrated leadership ability, but we didn’t make sure they had returning eligibility,” Stratten said. “We had a fabulous conference, but half of the participants never returned to school. We wanted to make sure that these students go back and make a difference on their campus.”

In the past, participants have stayed in their leadership conference teams to discuss their action plans. There will be a different approach at the 2006 national conference.

Instead of having student-athletes with vastly distinct action plans collaborating, participants will now be grouped according to the purpose of their proposals.

“We’re putting them in rooms according to topic this year,” said Curtis Hollomon, NCAA associate director of education services. “This way, they can get a couple extra ideas. When everyone’s concentrating on the same thing, it’s like another brainstorming session. They come up with similar ideas and they’ll have each other as contacts.”

Seeing other student-athletes excited and focused should have a domino effect, if only because of the competitive nature of most student-athletes.

“Being in the same room as all the other teams from our conference makes you say, ‘If Emory can do it, so can we,’” Kressel said. “We’re so competitive in sports with all those teams, so why not be competitive with this? If you’re not a competitive person, you’re not going to go out of your way to get everything you want and work really hard to implement all the steps we laid out.”

When the national conference begins May 28, about 350 student-athletes will begin the exploration of their leadership skills. By the time the week is over, they will have an action plan in hand, and they will be prepared to make a positive impact on the student-athlete community.

“I want them to start an idea that hasn’t been started before. It doesn’t have to be monumental, but it does have to be something that would influence the lives of other student-athletes,” Stratten said.

Action plans

Here are some of the topics for which action plans have been developed at various leadership conferences:

• Create athletic trainer position

• Increase alcohol awareness

• Increase drug education

• Address negative stereotypes of student-athletes

• Increase fan attendance

• Expand SAAC focus

• Develop SAAC communication strategy

• Expand course selection

• Assess training needs of student-athletes

• Host event for student-athletes the day before classes begin

• Address disconnect between student-athletes and rest of campus

• Form campus collaboration committee

• Create a carnival for student-athletes

• Create fair excused-absence policy for student-athletes

• Establish better relationship with Greek life

• Increase support for Olympic sports

• Conduct a student-athlete summit

• Gain more fan support from community

• Frequent Fan Program

Conference alum chosen No. 1 by Bears

Former Division II Leadership Academy participant Danieal Manning will hone his skills on the gridiron this fall as a member of the Chicago Bears.

Manning, who was Chicago’s first pick of the draft and was taken 42nd overall, led Abilene Christian University with three interceptions last season. The cornerback was also a kickoff and punt return specialist for the Wildcats.

Manning is a graduate of the February 2005 Academy in Dallas, and Abilene Christian faculty athletics representative David Merrell says the experience was a life-changing one for Manning.

“When Danieal came here, he wasn’t much of a student. I think the leadership academy moved him from almost totally shy to much more outgoing in other realms of his life,” said Merrell, who is a professor of English at Abilene Christian. “The fact that people who didn’t know him would take him seriously was a revelation to him.”

Manning returned to campus intent on finding budget dollars for the learning enhancement center, which was a place for all student-athletes to receive tutoring help and concentrate on their studies.

While the center hasn’t reopened, Manning did help set the wheels in motion for other additions.

“He certainly made people become aware of its importance,” Merrell said.

Manning informed Merrell of his plans to finish his education, and the professor is confident the Bears will be happy with the player, and more importantly, the person, they drafted.

“When they did a check on his character and personal stability, he scored very high on those things. I think that’s one of the reasons the Bears were willing to draft him so high,” Merrell said.

Manning’s experience at the leadership academy proved so valuable that the all-American would be willing to return as a guest speaker in the near future.

“I think he’d go in there and tell other young folks how much the experience did for him,” Merrell said. “It helped him recognize some of the talent inside him that wasn’t (directly related to) football.”