Contact: Lou Groce, Director of Media and Information, 920-229-8157
GRINNELL, Iowa – Professors, faculty athletic representatives, coaches, administrators, and other professionals of Midwest Conference (MWC) member institutions gathered at the Grand Geneva Resort in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin on Wednesday and Thursday for the 2014 MWC Athletics Integration Workshop, with Mark Majeski of Majeski Athletic Consulting facilitating.
Photo Gallery
Majeski, a former Athletic Director at Willamette University, challenged schools to consider how effectively they are aligning institutional, departmental and program goals with intended outcomes for student-athletes.
“The goal is to help campuses leverage athletics to support their institutional missions,” said Majeski. “Athletics is not maximized to support the institutional mission.”
Throughout the workshop, the attendees discussed what athletic integration is, identified potential roadblocks, outlined institutional goals, and created strategies to integrate effectively on their campuses. Improving the student-athlete experience was also a key topic.
“As a FAR (faculty athletic representative), it helped me organize my thoughts and all of us develop a process and action plan to make certain our steps moving forward are purposeful,” said George Williams, a Professor of Art for Beloit College.
For each topic, the attendees split off into small groups of professionals from across the conference to brainstorm ideas and discuss what each other does on their campus. Then, they took their ideas and met back with members of their own institution.
“Coaches don’t always have a lot of original ideas. We steal from other people. To see the best practices that other people are doing gives me an appreciation for what we are doing and how we are going to improve,” said Grinnell College Athletic Director Greg Wallace.
This workshop was funded through the NCAA DIII Strategic Initiative Grant Tier II monies. As integration is a central tenet of the
NCAA DIII Philosophy, the DIII Presidents Council approved a Strategic Positioning Platform “to help bring conference key partners together in an effort to discuss ways in which each school (and the conference as a group) might best support the integration concept, consistent with the Division’s unique philosophy, identity, and strategic positioning platform.”
Ultimately, the aim is for DIII member schools and conferences “to establish and maintain an environment in which a student-athlete’s activities are conducted as an integral part of the overall educational experience.”
“There is a lot of myth and misperception about what DIII Athletics is and isn’t,” said Rob Flot, the Vice President for Student Affairs at Lake Forest College. “Athletics is central to a liberal arts experience.”
The workshop also provided some representatives a glimpse of what campus life is like for many student-athletes throughout the Conference.
“Getting an inside look at athletics in the college realm is a great way for me to open my eyes up to what else happens on campus,” said the Assistant Director of Student Activities at Ripon College Kyonna Withers. “Being on the student affairs side, we have to make sure we are integrating our athletes into the rest of the campus because we see them in our student organizations. We see them in our Greek groups, and we see them in the different facets of campus.”
“It was a very engaged group,” said Majeski. “That engagement brings productive dialogues. One of my hopes is that this can spark or reignite those dialogues on each campus.”