Ann King, Director of Sports Information at The Sage Colleges, serves as Chair of a new NCAA Division III/CoSIDA Strategic Communications Working Group assembled in the spring. The group is composed of professionals from D3SIDA, NCAA DIII Commissioners Association, NCAA DIII Management Council along with a student-athlete representative from the D3 National SAAC group (Student-Athlete Advisory Committee).
This group was put together to identify professional development opportunities for D3 information/communications directors on campuses and in conference offices, with the goal to support the
D3 identity initiative and strategic plan by enhancing the athletics communications profession and experience.
Below, King provides an update on the group's progress.
During the spring of 2012, a working group was established to identify professional development opportunities for campus and conference sports information directors (SIDs) on the NCAA Division III level. The goal of the working group is to support the division’s identity initiative and strategic plan by enhancing athletics communication in DIII locally, within conferences and nationally. Identify ways in which to allocate existing and new resources to achieve this goal. Concepts to consider include, but are not limited to, a model strategic communications do
cument, and grant programs to directly support the creation or enhancement of sports information positions at the campus and conference levels.
The working group consists of a pair of DIII SIDs (preferably from the DIII CoSIDA board), two representatives from the DIII Commissioners Association (DIIICA) [preferably with SID backgrounds], two representatives from the DIII Management Council and national SAAC representative.
Selected to serve on the group are Ann King (The Sage Colleges), Ira Thor (New Jersey City University), Patrick Summers (Commissioner of the New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference), Chuck Yrigoyen (Commissioner of the Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference), Steve Nelson (Director of Athletics at the University of Wisconsin-Superior), Portia Hoeg (Director of Athletics at Allegheny College) and Nafeesa Connolly (volleyball student-athlete and NCAA Division III National SAAC Member from Simmons College).
Additional support for the group is being provided by the NCAA with Louis McCleary (Director of Division III), Kat Krtnick (Assistant Director of Communications) and Jack Copeland (NCAA Contractor). King was named the chair of the working group on the May 21 conference call.
Since the formation of the group, an in-person meeting was held in conjunction with the 2012 CoSIDA convention as well as a number of conference calls. On the most recent call of August 1, the group discussed the preliminary results of the D3SIDA Athletics Communicators Survey, which was produced by Thor, who hopes to have the final report completed and returned to the working group by Aug. 30. As of August 1, there have been over 300 respondents so far, which is over 80% of the Division III membership.
The group discussed the fact that the NCAA National office has supported the Division III Strategic Priorities and has now transitioned to a triennial budget (2012-2015). The strategic plan providing budget guidance has been approved by Management Council and is anticipated to be approved at the upcoming Presidents Council meeting.
As a result, the NCAA Division III has made a full commitment to building its partnership with CoSIDA and through three avenues:
a. Support, through this working group, strategic communication and development of athletics communications on campuses and in conference offices.
b. Support Academic All-American program, which has been a huge success for Division III.
c. Find additional ways for Sports Information Directors/Athletic Communications Directors to get professional development.
The group reviewed the following issues for the purpose of identifying and prioritizing top issues:
• Work load.
• Wide variety of duties (related issue: technology demands).
• Access to professional development (e.g., skills, issues).
• Assignment of athletics communication roles to non-professionals.
• Lack of staffing (related issues: scheduling of contests, number of sponsored sports).
• Short tenure in job.
• Rapid change in external communications environment.
• Compensation/contracts.
• Degree of involvement in departmental/institutional strategic planning.
• Adequacy of institutional resources (e.g., equipment, technology).
• Value of communications role inside/outside of athletics department.
• Other.
Additionally the group has identified and prioritized the top five issues for SIDs/athletic communications directors.
After considerable discussion, there were suggestions to combine items including: degree of involvement in departmental/institutional strategic planning and value of communications role inside/outside of athletics department; wide variety of duties (related issue: technology demands) and rapid change in external communications environment; short tenure in job and compensation/contracts.
· When prioritizing, it was agreed upon that “workload” is definitely a priority.
· Some priorities will be overlapping. For example, adequacy of institutional resources could be incorporated into each group.
As a result the working group has created three sub-committee groups to address and has assigned the members with the task of discuss and deal the three prioritized areas.
1. Workload – variety of duties, change, staffing, technology (Summers, Hoeg, McCleary)
2. Access to professional development – shorter tenures on the job, compensation/contracts (Thor, Yrigoyen, Copeland)
3. Involvement within the department – value of position, degree involvement in department’s strategic planning, respect within campus community (Nelson, King, Connolly, Krtnick)
The subcommittees are starting to develop concrete ideas and goals with their designated topic and have an NCAA staff member that has been assigned as a liaison for each subcommittee. The working group can pull in other resources (people) as needed and the resulting reports ultimately contribute to membership education. The goals of the working groups are a number of possible outcomes, but not limited to the creation of a best practices document or a possible communication plan for Division III, as was created for Division II in recent years.