Fifteen faculty athletics representatives attended the fifth Division II FAR Advanced Leadership Institute from Sept. 30 to Oct. 2 in Indianapolis to develop professionally and to start creating a resource to benefit their peers and the division at large.
Selected in spring 2022, this year's participants all previously participated in one of the FAR Fellows Institutes and demonstrated examples of how they had used information and skills from that event to enhance their work within college athletics.
The advanced institute included presentations and discussions that covered leadership, strategic communications skills, divisional and NCAA-wide updates, and how Division II FARs can better position themselves with opportunities provided by the new NCAA constitution. The new constitution states that FARs serve "as the principal point of contact to whom student-athletes can report any action, activity or behavior by anyone associated with athletics programs inconsistent with this Constitution's principle of student-athlete health and well-being."
Andro Barnett, FAR at Shepherd, said the advanced institute provided tools to manage the expectations and challenges that may come from this defined role. Specifically, attendees engaged in professional development sessions on, among other topics, having difficult conversations and building trust, conducted by Justin Patton, an executive leadership coach.
"I know I'm going to have some difficult conversations that I'm going to have to be involved with, especially with the new constitution," said Barnett, who will begin serving as the president of the Faculty Athletics Representatives Association in November. "It is a real, real big deal for us now. We were already having those difficult conversations, and Justin really just brought to light, for me, how to go about these difficult conversations."
"I gained some helpful tools to refine my leadership style and some useful steps to remember when planning for a difficult conversation," added Bennett Cherry, FAR at Cal State San Marcos. "The professional development training that Justin Patton provided was engaging, interesting and memorable."
The group also worked with the TiER1 Performance Institute, whose mission is to "improve organizations through the performance of people to build a better world." TiER1 representatives took the attendees through a design thinking process, a problem-solving methodology that focuses on involving users of a solution in its design, aimed at thinking about how FARs market themselves to key stakeholders.
"While all the ideas we generated weren't actionable or possible, as a group, we coalesced around some recurring themes that gained traction and could lead to the creation of useful tools in helping student-athletes and the DII membership to understand the importance of the FAR role and also be used for training new FARs," Cherry said.
As part of the design thinking process, the attendees began to develop a new resource for Division II University — an online education program for membership — that can support Division II FARs and the broader membership. Previous Division II FAR Advanced Leadership Institutes have produced materials like the Enhanced Campus Conductivity resource, the Model Faculty Athletics Representative document and the Role of the FAR in Supporting Student-Athlete Mental Health and Wellness report. (See more Division II FAR resources here.)
"Over the years, close to 300 DII FARs have participated in the institutes, and they have had the opportunity to build communication and leadership skills, network with peers to share effective practices and brainstorm about how to better support student-athletes and, through the advanced institutes, build a collection of resources to support other FARs," said Diane Husic, who facilitated the advanced institute and serves as a professor, the environmental studies and sciences program director. "Working through a design-thinking process at the fifth advanced institute this year with TiER1 was an entirely different and fascinating process that helped us identify a number of new areas to work on, as well as demonstrated the need for us to think strategically about where these institutes can go, and improve, over the next several years."
Division II FAR Advanced Leadership Institute Roster
- Andro Barnett, Shepherd
- Rhonda Beemer, Northwest Missouri State
- Laura Chase, Cal Poly Pomona
- Bennett Cherry, Cal State San Marcos
- Trey Cone, Central Oklahoma
- Barry Cuffe, Wingate
- Tim Dudley, Minnesota-Crookston
- Jennifer Hallett, Young Harris
- Katherine Loh, Florida Southern
- Shawn Munford, East Stroudsburg
- Jacqueline Novak, Walsh
- Raymond Patterson, Saint Michael's
- Todd Pitts, Davenport
- Patrick Sime, Caldwell
- Shawn Worthy, Metropolitan State University of Denver