NEW MEDIA
Campus Connection: License to brag
By Josh Centor
With Title IX celebrating its 36th anniversary this summer, it was an excellent time to learn how the landmark antidiscrimination law has affected the lives of women who have chosen to spend their careers in intercollegiate athletics.
In June, NCAA intern Howard Smith conducted a series of podcast interviews with the commissioners of the Atlantic 10, Northeast-10 and Allegheny Mountain Collegiate conferences. In the interviews, Smith asked Bernadette McGlade, Julie Ruppert and Donna Ledwin to elaborate on how Title IX affected them personally and aided the trajectory of their careers in athletics administration.
Campus Connection is a regular feature on the NCAA blog (DoubleAZone.com) and was originally developed as a way to catch up with athletics directors from across the country. Since its launch in September, however, Campus Connection has expanded to include interviews with other athletics administrators, professors, coaches, student-athletes – and now commissioners.
Campus Connection serves as an appropriate complement to the Double-A Zone’s podcast feature Mondays With Myles, which offers weekly conversations with NCAA President Myles Brand about hot topics affecting intercollegiate athletics and higher education. Campus Connection, on the other hand, has provided those who frequent the Double-A Zone with an opportunity to step away from national issues and find out what’s happening on more of a local level.
The podcasts provide a chance for those who are featured to boast about the successes of their institutions and conferences, often focusing on the success of student-athletes in the classroom, facilities upgrades, departmental philosophies, and, in the case of Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel, why he wears a sweater vest.
To find out more about how your school can be featured on Campus Connection, e-mail Howard Smith at hsmith@ncaa.org.
“I’m a product of Title IX. If I hadn’t attended North Carolina on a basketball scholarship and had every door in the world opened to me, I wouldn’t have the career that I have right now.” – Bernadette McGlade, commissioner of the Atlantic-10 (June 23, 2008)
“We have to start at the grass-roots level and get more black female student-athletes involved in nontraditional sports like lacrosse, soccer, field hockey and equestrian.”
– Emmett Gill, assistant professor at Rutgers (April 10, 2008)
“It’s a proven fact that on our institution, athletics can fit and go hand in hand with our academics, and we have a tremendous rapport with both.”
– Brad Davis, athletics director at Chadron State (October 11, 2007)