The chair of the Division I Committee on Athletics Certification is realistic about the way self-studies are regarded.

"Could you get very many people in a room to raise their hand and say they would look forward to athletics certification?" mused Elon University President Leo Lambert. "No. Do we look forward to American Bar Association visits and accreditation visits? Of course not — they’re a lot of work."

But Lambert and many other college and university presidents know full well the benefits of the program, which Division I established at the 1993 Convention. Simply stated, Lambert said, athletics certification "is one of the programs in higher education that keeps us in a mode of continual improvement and setting the bar higher in the interests of our student-athletes."

As the program nears its third cycle, more and more presidents are starting to agree. And now they’re being asked to be even more involved in the best tool Division I has to help integrate athletics into the university system — a fundamental principle of the collegiate model and a core ideology of the NCAA strategic plan.

To be sure, though, athletics certification is not easy. Bob Lawless, president emeritus at the University of Tulsa, said the average self-study distributed to certification committee members is about 145 pages. "And it’s not your most exciting reading," he said.

Athletics certification doesn’t generate much publicity, either — certainly not in the way that the sports programs themselves attract attention on the fields and courts. Debbie Yow, whose athletics program at the University of Maryland, College Park, came through certification’s second cycle with a good report, said national championships — not certification outcomes — catch the imagination of alumni and the public. "A positive certification is generally considered a baseline/threshold requirement, so achieving a clean slate is simply expected. Thus, no bells and whistles," she said.

That means presidents — busy as they are — will be urged to strengthen their grip on the wheel of Division I’s athletics accreditation vehicle.

"I know how busy university presidents are," Lambert said. "For example, we’re in the midst of planning for a comprehensive campaign at Elon, and the pressures for me to be off campus now in fund-raising are enormous — but you can’t have it both ways. If you really want presidents to be strong leaders in Division I, it is fundamentally important that they be actively engaged on their own campuses and through the NCAA in the governance of the organization."

Lambert in fact called at least occasional participation in the athletics certification process a president’s "civic responsibility" — not just to be integrally involved in his or her own campus review, but also as chair of a peer-review team that helps another school get its athletics house in order.

"The phrase ‘civic responsibility’ is apt here," he said. "We need to show leadership on our own campuses, but also through our willingness to uphold the high standards of Division I nationally by participating in governance, including every few years taking responsibility for chairing an athletics certification site visit."

Among recommendations from the Presidential Task Force, of which Lambert is a member, will be a legislative proposal to increase the number of presidents on the athletics certification committee. Current composition requirements call for just one, which some people see as a weakness.

Increased presidential involvement also extends to more peer-review visits. But do presidents have the time? Perhaps not at first glance, Lawless said, but they ought to make time.

"It’s part of the overall responsibility," Lawless said. "Every president is interested in his or her institution operating as much as possible in accordance within the guidelines of whatever body is doing the review. No one wants a program that’s out of bounds. Accreditation is set up to ensure that the educational product you’re delivering meets standards. Certification is the same thing for athletics."

At least one president has made time for athletics certification and is glad he did. Winthrop University’s Anthony DiGiorgio said peer review is one of the most beneficial aspects of the program.

"I support more presidential involvement within the certification process," DiGiorgio said. "Get involved either as an evaluator or as chair of the committee — do that once or twice, and you learn one heck of a lot."

DiGiorgio said presidents who have never done a site visit would be surprised at the depth of understanding they can develop, and once developed it becomes the mindset they can use to oversee their own athletics program. "Chairing certifications at other institutions opened my eyes, not necessarily to things we were doing egregiously wrong, but to nuances and elements that would be important mechanisms to make sure that we are allowing for success," he said.

Lambert agreed with his colleague. Presidents bring a special vantage point to the process that can’t naturally be brought by other key constituents, he said, including athletics directors and conference commissioners and senior woman administrators. He said that vantage point is absolutely essential to the success of the athletics certification process.

"In higher education, peer review is the best mechanism we have for ensuring quality over the long term," Lambert acknowledged.

Improve, not punish

Lambert, who has chaired the Committee on Athletics Certification since 2005, said most Division I institutions have learned to embrace athletics certification as a chance to improve, not as a gauntlet to run. That spirit of fortifying the integrity of the athletics operation manifests itself in the broad-based participation in the self-study, he said.

"The best self-studies tend to be those that have an open and broad set of campus constituencies participating, particularly faculty," Lambert said. "It’s a great opportunity for all constituencies to look at the athletics program with a fresh perspective. It is misguided for an institution to keep the process held too closely within the confines of athletics. That is not going to result in a robust review."

Baylor University officials appreciated that collaboration during their recent spin through the second cycle. Faculty Athletics Representative Mike Rogers, a member of the school’s steering committee during the athletics certification process, said the help from peer reviewers and the NCAA membership services staff was akin to having unpaid consultants providing valuable counsel.

Certification, Rogers said, is not an adversarial process, but one designed to help an institution improve through self-reflection and objective outside analysis.

That’s a drastic improvement from the first cycle, Rogers said, when certification was new and institutions worked more in a vacuum.

"In the first cycle, you labored intensively and for a long time to prepare a report without knowing how you were doing. You weren’t getting any feedback from the staff; you just hoped your report would meet standards. This time with the assignment of a liaison from membership services and regular feedback, we felt good about the direction we were headed," Rogers said. "It was like having interim grades during the semester."

In two years, Division I schools will begin their third iteration of athletics certification. But familiarity does not breed contentment; improving the process is an ongoing concern.

The Division I Management Council and Board of Directors adopted significant upgrades in January 2004, among them the elimination of five operating principles that were covered either in other areas of athletics certification or by other NCAA legislation.

The certification committee also developed "measurable standard" documents to clarify the committee’s expectations for each operating principle. In addition, the group created a Web site devoted specifically to athletics certification that contains information and documents related to the self-study process (orientation-visit materials, measurable-standards documents, requirements for institutional plans). A Web-based software program also was implemented for submitting and storing institutional self-studies, peer-review team reports and committee actions.

Winthrop President Digiorgio appreciated the technology enhancements. "I’m pleased that the Association has worked to streamline the process," he said. "The amount of paper now, frankly, is minimal."

Changes for the third cycle aren’t as sweeping, though Elon’s Lambert said the operating principles regarding fiscal integrity that were removed two years ago may return in a more organized form. That may depend on where the Presidential Task Force comes out on the issue, since fiscal responsibility is a major focus of that group. The task force may see athletics certification as the appropriate vehicle for ensuring that athletics departments aren’t outspending their means, especially now that the NCAA is working on ways to collect more concise and comparable financial data.

But Lambert said he’s just as interested in the big-picture view with the third cycle. Now that institutions have been around the athletics certification block a couple of times, he wants to see commitments that have been put to paper come to life.

"We’ve been through two certification cycles, and we want to make sure that every institution knows that they have responsibility to follow up on plans they set forth in their last review," he said. "We’re not asking schools to engage in the self-study and to construct plans for improvement as an academic exercise. We’re expecting to see that if an institution in its self-study determines that it will make various kinds of advances for its athletics program that in fact those plans are implemented.

"If an institution has set goals for its programs, it should be pursuing them with honesty, integrity and with earnestness."

If the self-studies the committee receives are an indication, that earnestness is apparent more often than not. More and more institutions are exiting the review process with outcomes such as those from Winthrop, Baylor, Maryland and others.

Tulsa’s Lawless said that’s largely due to knowing the ins and outs of the process, but also being smarter about integrating the athletics program as part of the university. The emphasis that NCAA President Myles Brand and others have given that notion seems to be manifesting itself in certification outcomes.

"I do believe that because the program has been around for a while, there is a lot more conformity in the program," Lawless said. "In the first cycle we had schools all over the map in terms of the number of issues they had. In the second cycle, we see schools that have issues, but the number of issues is so much less on average because people have moved to be in accordance with the operating principles.

"That indicates to me that certification is working."

•  Orientations conducted via videoconference.
•  NCAA staff conducts an initial review of the self-study report.
• Committee performs its initial review before peer-review team visit.
• Peer-review team visits reduced from four to fewer than three full days and focus on issues of accuracy, broad-based participation and the committee-identified issues.
•  Peer-review team composition can vary from two to four members, depending on the number and scope of the committee-identified issues.
•  The committee, institution, peer-review team and staff all use the Web-based Athletics Certification System to store and input information and reports.
• Entire process reduced from 24-26 months to about 18 months.
•  Interim reports eliminated.

Winthrop University President Anthony DiGiorgio wasn’t surprised earlier this year when the Division I Committee on Athletics Certification cited zero issues with his institution’s athletics operations. He expected it, in fact.

Though the no-issues seal of approval is rarified air for Division I’s rigorous review program, DiGiorgio and his staff said that’s what they wanted to accomplish more than a year before Winthrop’s turn in the second cycle came up.

"We challenged ourselves to complete the process with zero issues," said the 17-year Winthrop leader. "By saying it, you communicate the expectation. The combination of those two things — starting early and setting a high standard — produced the result."

DiGiorgio said Winthrop put the notion of NCAA athletics certification on the agenda even a year before the school would normally begin preparing for the self-study. School officials performed an internal audit to determine how athletics was already meeting or not meeting the criteria. For the most part, DiGiorgio said, things were running smoothly.

"You have to be doing things reasonably well to start with — you can’t fake it," he said. "But what you can do is correct the small things around the edges, and we got all of that done."

DiGiorgio is a fan of the kind of broad-based participation in the self-study that the athletics certification committee recommends. The way athletics is structured within the Winthrop campus lends itself to that sort of oversight anyway, DiGiorgio said. He cited a strong faculty presence both in terms of an FAR who "knows and appreciates athletics but is tough-minded and gives no quarter on that end," and a faculty intercollegiate athletics committee that oversees matters related to the academic side of the house. DiGiorgio also applauded an active student-athlete advisory committee.

"Those three entities are inter-related and do not operate independently," he said. "You have people of like minds who understand the task and goals and interact to achieve the desired outcome."

Noley Bice, who was Baylor University’s general counsel when the Bears athletics program was certified with zero issues this spring, said the multi-perspective input can’t be anything but valuable. "Everyone related to the campus has input into the process," he said.

Baylor’s athletics certification process occurred at an interesting time. The athletics department was coming off a major infractions case, which FAR Mike Rogers said "helped us slide right into the certification process." He said during the school’s investigation in the infractions case, when issues were identified, "we resolved to fix them."

"We wanted to do better than just comply with the operating principles in certification," Rogers said.

The "zero-issues" outcome is hard to achieve, simply because of the number of minor issues that can arise during the process. Many institutions, though, come close. University of Tulsa President Emeritus Bob Lawless said several schools get tripped up on two relatively minor points: stating the five-year length of any plans for improvement and not clarifying the statement of rules compliance for people related to but not directly employed by the athletics department (the registrar, for example). But schools certified with those kinds of minor issues, Lawless said, aren’t far removed from a zero-issues result.

And even schools that are certified with zero issues can assume that work remains.

"When you are certified with zero issues," Rogers said, "it doesn’t mean that everything you’re doing is the way it should be. The certification process allows you to identify weaknesses and establish plans for improvement. That is another benefit of the program in that it encourages people to identify weaknesses and shore them up, rather than try to minimize them or avoid confronting them. We have plans for improvement in a number of areas, for example.

"To me the self-study is about saying, ‘If you’re good at something, get better, and if you’re not good at something, get good.’ If there’s ever someone who comes through with no issues and no plans for improvement, I’d like to meet them."

Still, a clean athletics certification gives schools a chance to celebrate a little — another positive outcome of the process.

"We’re proud that there is an environment here, as represented in the certification result, where student-athletes can continue to grow and develop," DiGiorgio said. "That’s the reason why you have athletics in the first place."

Auburn University

Brown University

University of California, Berkeley

California Polytechnic State University

California State University, Fullerton

California State University, Sacramento

University of Cincinnati

Colgate University

University of Detroit Mercy

Drake University

Fairfield University

University of Florida

Florida State University

Furman University

University of Hartford

Harvard University

University of Houston

Jacksonville University

James Madison University

Lehigh University

Liberty University

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

McNeese State University

Morgan State University

University of Nebraska, Lincoln

University New Hampshire

New Mexico State University

Oral Roberts University

University of Oregon

University of the Pacific

University of Pittsburgh

University of Portland

Quinnipiac University

Robert Morris University

St. Peter’s College

Syracuse University

Texas A&M University, College Station

University of Tulsa

University of Vermont

Youngstown State University

University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa

University of Arizona

Austin Peay State University

University of California, Irvine

Centenary College (Louisiana)

University of Connecticut

Duquesne University

Eastern Washington University

Florida A&M University

Georgia Institute of Technology

Georgia State University

Grambling State University

Hampton University

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Nicholls State University

Pennsylvania State University

Pepperdine University

Purdue University

University of Richmond

Sacred Heart University

Southern Illinois University at Carbondale

University of South Florida

Temple University

University of Texas at Arlington

University of Texas at Austin

University of Texas at San Antonio

The Citadel

University of Toledo

Utah State University

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Western Michigan University

University of Wisconsin, Green Bay

Wofford College

Xavier University

University of Alabama at Birmingham

University of Arkansas, Little Rock

Boston College

Brigham Young University

University of California, Santa Barbara

California State University, Fresno

California State University, Northridge

Cornell University

George Washington University

Hofstra University

Howard University

University of Illinois, Champaign

Indiana State University

Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis

Jacksonville State University

Lamar University

University of Louisiana at Lafayette

University of Louisiana at Monroe

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

University of Mississippi

University of Missouri, Kansas City

Morehead State University

Murray State University

Norfolk State University

Northern Arizona University

Ohio University

Princeton University

Providence College

Rice University

Sam Houston State University

Stanford University

Texas State University-San Marcos

Tennessee State University

Texas Tech University

U.S. Military Academy

Weber State University

University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee