Majeski Athletic Consulting had the pleasure of facilitating a workshop for The Midwest Conference, and NCAA Division III conference with 11 institution from Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa. The day and a half long workshop was designed to help institutions leverage athletics to support their missions and overall educational experience. More than 50 representatives attended the workshop, held at the Grand Geneva Resort in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, including coaches, athletics administrators, student affairs personnel, faculty and senior administrators. For more information about workshops, contact us or visit this web page.
From The Midwest Conference:
5/30/2014 11:15:40 AM
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.
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.”