Personnel Issues

ANSWER:  Athletic Director leadership is everything when it comes to encouragement of minority recruiting.  Require the hiring supervisor for any open position to identify the top female and minority prospects regionally and nationally for that position and to personally call or visit those prospects to urge them to apply.  Waiting for “paper candidates” is simply not good enough when supply does not meet demand.  The process for developing a top recruiting list is as  simple as developing a scholarship prospect list – you must identify the talent.&

A:   “Laying the groundwork” is an important concept to acknowledge and address when trying to enact change in areas where defensiveness or resistance is high.  When you have a predominantly majority organization, most of the time white and male in the sports world, it’s easy to see where  employees may interpret increasing diversity or inclusion as loss of opportunity for everything from continued employment or advancement to restrictions on choice where such restrictions were never previously imposed.  Here are five suggestions for “must” steps in developing a “no

A:  YES.  The student-athlete is the primary “customer” of the athletics program and the athletics director and coach should have such “customer satisfaction” input.  Player evaluation instruments should be constructed collaboratively by the coaching staff and the athletics administrators and administered annually.   Following is a sample Student-Athlete Evaluation form.   Player evaluations of coaches should be administered without coaches being present and player confidentiality must be assured in order for such evaluation efforts to be effective.

A:  The Athletic Director should  be responsible for establishing a fair process for handling student-athlete or parent complaints related to the instructional ability or behavior of a coach that is consistent with standard procedures for handling employee conflicts or performance issues but also includes:

Key to successfully influencing others is an understanding of the mechanisms of ‘change’.  What the athletics director is really trying to do when asking others to think in a certain way, take specific actions or provide resources is to change that other person’s thinking to support a new position.   An athletics director may not only have to deal with the challenge of all employees accepting the change, but possibly parents, student-athletes and donors too.  Think of what will go through the hearts and minds of student-athletes and donors who are asked to accept and sup

In the arena of educational sport a number of current and historical factors have contributed to the perpetuation of sex discrimination:

By Christine H.B. Grant and Janet Judge (originally published as part of an NCAA series on Gender Equity Q&As in the NCAA News)

Introduction

Both the Department of Education and the United States Supreme Court have found that sexual harassment is a form of sexual discrimination prohibited by Title IX. In January 2001, the Department published "Revised Sexual Harassment Guidance: Harassment of Students by School Employees, Other Students or Third Parties." That Title IX guidance updates and revises the original 1997 guidelines to incorporate and discuss important Supreme Court cases that were decided on the subject in the interim: Gebser v.