#10: PSAC Commissioner Steve Murray sits down with The Add/Drop Podcast on league-wide efforts and the higher education landscape. Asked about the PSAC’s social justice task force, Murray notes the initiatives include simple efforts like PA announcements and election day activities and more complex actions, like examining the applicant and interview pools for HC and AC openings to "See if we can see trends, who's improving their trends in applications. We asked about what the diversity of the selection pool is versus the interview pool and are there are there committees that look better than others, and is that a direct result of maybe having some more diversity being hired." Further: “I frankly, have told our presidents that you know, I'm probably not long for this career after being involved in college athletics coming on 40 years, this is going to be the impact I'm going to make in our conference.” On the pair of institutional consolidations around the league at PennWest and Commonwealth University, Murray believes this setup will be less uncommon given the challenges around higher education and the ability to remain viable by sharing costs across multiple campuses, adding: “There are institutions closing around the country. Not so much with publics yet, privates certainly are closing. I don't think it will be necessary long before you see some publics. I think I have to give the state system here credit for taking a crack at it and looking at it. It's not a perfect system. I think it's going to take a generation probably to iron out all the bugs from what I can gather, but from our standpoint in athletics, from the conference standpoint, I should say, it's gone fairly smoothly.” (link)
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#9: GLVC Commissioner Jim Naumovich joins The Add/Drop Podcast about how the league has changed over his 23 years at the helm and what are the next steps in the evolution of DII. With a number of membership changes including six schools reclassifying to DI during his tenure, Naumovich says the seamless transition in both membership and geographic footprint has been the most surprising. On the future of DII: “It’s how we recreate ourselves as a division. […] I think for us, it's how do we help our schools create a niche market with academic programming or other things of that nature, but I think just remaining viable and having the resources needed to have a competitive athletic program while also maintaining the viability of the school.” (link)
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#8: The national four-cohort DII ASR average remained steady at 76%, while the DII FGR continued to outpace the general student population 60% vs 53%. Per the NCAA: “Notable single-class student-athlete increases in ASR over the 17 years of calculating this rate in Division II include overall (from 69% to 77%), Black men (from 42% to 51%), Black women (from 61% to 76%), Hispanic/Latinx men (48% to 66%) and Hispanic/Latinx women (63% to 80%). In addition, there have been notable increases in ASR for two-year transfer student-athletes (from 57% to 73%) and four-year transfer student-athletes (from 66% to 77%) over the past 10 years.” (link, link - Full presentation)
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#7: Bemidji State Assoc. AD for Compliance Andrea Dahly has left her position to become an Assistant County Attorney for Beltrami County (MN). (link) |
#6: Palm Beach Atlantic Women’s Volleyball HC Doug Walters resigns after six years. (link) |
#5: The Saint Rose Board of Trustees have voted to close the 103-year-old institution at the end of this academic year. Interim President Marcia White: “The closure of Saint Rose is truly heartbreaking for all of us who care deeply about the history and legacy of this institution and the extraordinary students we serve and have served for 103 years. We are announcing this now, months in advance of the actual closure, to give you as much time as possible to plan for your future.” (link); NE10 Commissioner Julie Ruppert released a statement which reads, in part: “We continue to work to enhance conference membership despite a difficult landscape to navigate within higher education and intercollegiate athletics. The NE10 is an excellent Division II conference with an outstanding reputation and rich history of successful athletic programs and outstanding student-athletes who have achieved great things on and off the field. We look forward to continued excellence from and for all our NE10 stakeholders.” (link)
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#4: Barton selects Georgia College Asst. AD/SWA Jamie Grodecki as its new Assoc. AD for External Relations and Facility Operations. (link) |
#3: Saint Martin’s has made over $5M in non-compensation-related cuts in the face of a $6.2M budget deficit. The university will seek to cut the remaining dollars through a pause of retirement contributions this year and rolling back a faculty pay increase that was previously approved. (link)
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#2: Nebraska-Kearney Men’s Basketball HC Kevin Lofton’s resignation was apparently spurred by being informed that the Lopers would not renew his contract that had an unusual end date. AD Marc Bauer: “We told Kevin that we were not renewing his contract. The contract ended on Nov. 30, which we were almost there. He knew that. Again, this was his decision on how he wanted this. [...] Obviously, the decisions that were made, a lot of it was predicated on that date. It’s been tough. It really has been. [...] The pressures are high right now in our men’s basketball program. Our fans want to see us win, our alumni want to see us win, and quite frankly, that’s part of the Division ll experience is that you have that opportunity to compete postseason and we haven’t been.” (link)
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#1: Walsh AD Nathan Cochran is headed to his alma mater, South Carolina State (DI), to become their next AD, per multiple sources. (link) |
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