NCAA President Myles Brand and Wally Renfro, NCAA Senior Advisor to the President, will conduct a panel entitled, Getting the Message out about Intercollegiate Athletics, at the 2007 CoSIDA Convention in San Diego, Calif. The convention, to be held at the San Diego Marriott & Marina on June 30-July 3, will celebrate the 50th anniversary of CoSIDA.
The panel will be conducted on Sunday, July 1. Dr. Brand, the fourth executive officer in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's history, will deliver the keynote address at the convention, earlier in the day. Dr. Brand assumed his duties as president of the NCAA on Jan. 1, 2003.
During his first four years with the NCAA, Brand has presided over passage of the most comprehensive academic reform package for intercollegiate athletics in recent history a package that refocuses the attention of student-athletes, coaches and administrators on the education of student-athletes. Brand has also changed the national dialog on college sports to emphasize the educational value of athletics participation and the integration of intercollegiate athletics with the academic mission of higher education. His tenure has helped reestablish the indispensable role of university presidents in the governance of college sports.
Brand was himself president of two major universities. From 1994 through 2002, he was president of Indiana University, an eight-campus institution of higher education with nearly 100,000 students, 17,000 employees and a budget of $3.4 billion. Brand also served as president at the University of Oregon from 1989 to 1994.
Brand has also served on the Executive Committee of the Board of directors, Association of American Universities (AAU), and as board chair, 1999-2000; a member of the board of directors, 1992-97, and executive committee, 1994-97, of the American Council on Education (ACE); and a member of the board of directors of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges (NASULGC), 1995-98. He served too as a board member of the American Philosophical Association and of the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development, the umbrella organization of Internet2.
His academic research investigates the nature of human action. His work focuses on intention, desire, belief and other cognitive states, as well as deliberation and practical reasoning, planning and general goal-directed activity. He has also written extensively on various topics in higher education, such as tenure and undergraduate education.
Dr. Brand earned his BS in philosophy from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1964, and his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rochester in 1967. He has also served on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors, Association of American Universities (AAU), and as board chair, 1999-2000; a member of the board of directors, 1992-97, and executive committee, 1994-97, of the American Council on Education (ACE); and a member of the board of directors of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges (NASULGC), 1995-98. In addition, he was a board member of the American Philosophical Association and of the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development, the umbrella organization of Internet2.
Renfro has worked for more than 40 years in the communications/public relations field, including 35 years at the NCAA. In 2002, he was a recipient of the CoSIDA Lifetime Achievement Award.
A graduate of Missouri State University, Renfro has media trained senior management for interviews on HBO Real Sports, ESPN Outside the Lines, FOX Sports News, 20/20, Court TV, CNN and CBS 60 Minutes; has served as a spokesperson for the NCAA in every major-market newspaper in the country; and has participated in hundreds of television and radio interviews. His op-eds and columns have been published in USA Today, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In his capacity as Senior Advisor, Renfro has written more than three dozen speeches, nearly a dozen Congressional testimonies, has testified before Congress on issues in college sports, and provides advice and counsel on a broad range of issues in intercollegiate athletics.
During his tenure as Director of Public Relations for the NCAA, Renfro developed the Associations first comprehensive strategic communications plan. He also helped draft the NCAAs first Association-wide strategic plan in 2004 and coordinated development of the public report entitled The Second-Century Imperatives: Presidential Leadership~Institutional Accountability for the Presidential Task Force on the Future of Division I Intercollegiate Athletics.
Renfro continues to provide media training for individuals and groups at both the national and institutional levels, including for the Associations Coaching Academies and the NCAA Fellows program.