President Hunter Rawlings announced today that Cornell will begin a yearlong, campuswide effort to study its athletics program as part of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I athletics certification program. Specific areas the study will cover are academic and financial integrity, rules compliance and a commitment to equity.
"This is a very important project that Cornell University is beginning today," said Rawlings. "We believe we run a first-rate athletics program, and this study will allow us to confirm that to ourselves and to our peer institutions."
Academic accreditation is common for colleges and universities. This program is the first to focus solely on certification of athletics programs. Following a pilot project, the NCAA Division I membership overwhelmingly supported the program and its standards at its 1993 annual convention.
The certification program's purpose is to ensure integrity in the institution's athletics operations. It will open up athletics to the rest of the university community and to the public. Cornell will benefit by increasing awareness and knowledge of the athletics program campuswide, confirming strengths and developing plans to improve in areas of concern, administrators say.
The committee responsible for the study will include Rawlings; Ronald G. Ehrenberg, vice president for academic programs, planning and budgeting and chair of the steering committee; various members of the faculty, students, staff and alumni, as well as athletics department personnel.
"I'm very pleased that President Rawlings asked me to head up this initial certification process. The work the steering committee and each of the subcommittees will be undertaking over the next year is extremely important and will be taken very seriously," Ehrenberg said. "We will turn in a very thorough report once the self-study is complete."
"The Cornell athletics department is very proud of the way we conduct business," said Charles H. Moore, director of athletics. "This self-study will give us the opportunity to look ourselves in the mirror, both as a department and as a campus community, to see just what an important role athletics plays within the university structure."
Diane Dickman, a member of the NCAA compliance services staff, is in Ithaca today and Friday, May 1, for an orientation visit to meet with the committee and its subcommittees. "The Committee on Athletics Certification has placed a great deal of emphasis on institutions completing a thorough and broad-based self-study," Dickman said. "The orientation visit officially kicks off Cornell's certification process."
Within each area to be studied by the committee, the program has set standards, called operating principles, which were adopted by the association to place a "measuring stick" upon which all Division I members are evaluated. The university also will examine how the activities of the athletics program relate to the mission and purpose of the institution. See story on the committee's public meeting schedule.
Once Cornell has concluded its own study, an external team of reviewers will conduct a three- to four-day evaluation visit on campus. Those reviewers will be peers from others colleges, conference offices and universities. That team will report to the NCAA Committee on Athletics Certification, another independent group. The committee will then determine Cornell's certification status and announce the decision publicly. For institutions that fail to conduct a comprehensive self-study or to correct problems, tough sanctions can be imposed.
The three options of certification status are: certified, certified with conditions and not certified. Universities/colleges will have an opportunity to correct deficient areas. Those institutions that do not take corrective actions may be ruled ineligible for NCAA championships.
The NCAA is a membership organization of colleges and universities that participate in intercollegiate athletics. The primary purpose of the association is to maintain intercollegiate athletics as an integral part of the educational program and the athlete as an integral part of the student body. Activities of the NCAA membership include formulating rules of play for NCAA sports, conducting national championships, adopting and enforcing standards of eligibility and studying all phases of intercollegiate athletics.
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