By Dr. Karen Weaver

Karen Weaver, EdD, is the Director of Athletics, Intramurals, and Recreation at Penn State Abington. Her last article for Athletic Management, "At Your Fingertips," focused on the ways she uses social media to promote her department. She can be reached at: kew21@psu.edu and followed on Twitter at: @abingtonsports and @collegeathlete.

Traditionally, the job of athletic director is very straightforward: oversee athletics at an institution. Hire good coaches, get schedules in place, make sure everything runs smoothly--and you're set for life.

But on some campuses, we are being asked to do more. The role of athletics is being examined in a new way, and athletic directors are being included in a school's overall strategic plans.

I'm not talking about the big-time schools, but rather the small college or university that is interested in expansion or attracting a different population. Over the past few years, small college presidents with big ideas are turning to their athletics programs and making them a key component to advancing their institutions.

Here at Penn State Abington, I've had the opportunity to be part of such a transformation. In 2006, I joined the staff as its first-ever full-time athletics director. My charge was to grow and change the athletic program so that it benefited the entire campus community.

IDENTITY NEEDED
Abington's athletics upgrade story began prior to my arrival on campus, when Chancellor Karen Wiley Sandler commissioned a committee of faculty, staff, and students to examine the role athletics might play in enhancing campus culture. Over the previous decade, Abington had transformed itself from a two-year to four-year school and was ready to take another step forward in its progress.

Since the 1950s, the school had been called Penn State Ogontz. It was known for providing access to Penn State's 2+2 program--students who were denied admission to the University Park (main) campus as high school seniors could enroll, spend two years taking general education classes, and then transfer to the "main" campus at the beginning of their junior year. In 1996, our campus was renamed Penn State Abington and began to offer four-year undergraduate degrees. We now have 16 majors for undergraduates, and more students choose to stay at Abington rather than go to University Park. But our athletics program had not changed much over the years.

The committee examining athletics came to an overwhelmingly strong conclusion that Penn State Abington should move its athletics program from the Penn State University Athletic Conference, a collection of Penn State campuses not affiliated with a national governing body at the time, to NCAA Division III. I was hired to achieve that goal.

Having been part of an athletic department that experienced monumental change in a previous job, I understood that this decision would have far-reaching ramifications that weren't yet apparent. There were obvious flashpoints: facility needs, hiring new coaches while letting some current coaches go, dramatically altering game schedules, and finding a new conference to compete in. But doing this within the tolerance of a community that had known success on a smaller scale became the larger, unspoken challenge. After all, we were winning--why should we change anything?

The main reason was that while Abington teams were bringing home victories, their success was not helping the college in any significant way. We were mostly competing against other schools under the Penn State umbrella, which made us one of many, with nothing unique. The cheer, "We are . . . Penn State!" at games took on a clumsy feel. Abington athletics lacked an athletic identity.

One problem was obvious from the beginning--we have no on-campus housing. While housing options do exist nearby, we have the challenge of engaging our students when there is no residence life. Without housing, how do we make Abington feel like a real college campus?

We believed we could accomplish this by creating a strong athletic identity. By making athletics more significant and cohesive, a stronger community could emerge. Then, our academic and campus culture profile would compare more favorably to the other small colleges in the area, making Abington a more attractive option for high school students and helping us retain those students all the way to graduation.

When I consider the question, "How can an athletics program change a campus culture?" I answer by considering the larger picture. Abington, like any other college campus, operates in a highly competitive marketplace. We are all working hard to recruit students to our campuses, and that can and should include athletes. It is no longer true that Division III rosters are filled with athletes who just show up for the first day of practice. Indeed, many campuses need their coaching staffs to bring in a certain number of recruits each year to hit their enrollment targets.

The best student-athletes have multiple colleges to choose from. For Penn State Abington to be in the mix, we have to be seen as competitive--in academics, access to postseason championships, scheduling, facilities, and coaching.

STRENGTHS & WEAKNESSES
Of course, there were many skeptics, but I wasn't one of them. I had a fresh set of eyes and did not see the obstacles from the same vantage point as those who had been on campus for a long time. What I saw, knew, and heard well before my first interview on campus left me very hopeful that not only could we do this, but that we could eventually be a very good Division III program. Here is what I saw as our strengths:

• A recognizable name (Penn State), known throughout the world for delivering a great education and quality graduates--all available on a smaller campus of 3,400 students.

• A campus community that understood and appreciated the value of athletics, located in an area full of absolutely rabid sports fans.

• A faculty of practitioners and scholars who focused on teaching--we do not have any graduate assistants teaching our classes and most faculty members come to Abington to be teachers first.

• A very affordable price of tuition, currently around $12,000 per year--one-third the cost of most other NCAA Division III schools. We are also the only public Division III school in the Philadelphia area.

• A great location. Our campus sits 15 miles from the most populous city in Pennsylvania--Philadelphia.

• A diverse student body. Abington serves three counties that are among the most diverse in the state. We draw our students from wealthy, public suburban high schools, private schools, Catholic high schools, and inner city public schools.

These strengths became the basis of our talking points to prospective student-athletes and their parents, and helped differentiate us from the vast number of choices they have in our marketplace. With a long list of positives, recruiting the types of students we were looking for was not hard. It also became the selling points I used when trying to hire good coaches.

Our major weakness was not being a part of a recognizable athletic conference or association. For years, our admissions staff, coaches, and even student-athletes had struggled with explaining who we were athletically. If it wasn't a prospective athlete's first question, it came soon after.

The NCAA brand is a powerful, well known one, and we needed to become part of it. I remember so vividly the day I asked my chancellor what her number-one goal was for the athletics program. "Get us into the NCAA!" she told me. Okay, I thought, I can do that. Having worked in NCAA programs for most of my career, and having my roots in Division III as a coach, I understood the value the NCAA brand would bring to our campus.

There was one small problem, however. A few short months before my arrival, the NCAA membership had instituted a moratorium on accepting new applications for Division III. Worse still, there was no timetable on when it might be lifted. Just as frustrating was that many current members of the NCAA we wanted and needed to add to our schedule were not automatically willing to schedule a non-NCAA school.

Every cloud has a silver lining, though. While we had to wait until 2009-10 to begin our provisional membership in Division III, it gave us time to ramp up. We needed to add sports, full-time staff members, and an academic eligibility infrastructure, improve some of our outdoor facilities, and upgrade our weight training and conditioning rooms to attract today's recruits.

When the moratorium was lifted 18 months ago, we were much more prepared for the more demanding standards the NCAA had implemented for new applicants. We take great pride in the fact that we were one of only three schools in the country invited to join the NCAA after the moratorium was lifted.

GETTING TO WORK
As I began the transformation process, I knew the goal and I knew our strengths and weaknesses. That was the easy part. The hard part was getting everyone to buy into the changes.

Having a vision and being effective at communicating that vision to every stakeholder is critical to the success of any project. Most strong leaders know this intrinsically. Without the financial and programming support of key campus leaders (both formal and informal), no matter how hard I tried, an upgrade would not happen.

Many of us believe, especially if we are former athletes, that if we just work harder, we can achieve a goal. But getting others to come on board is not so much about hard work as it is about communicating well and reaching out to others. Penn State Abington would not be where it is today without a collective team effort.

Who were the key campus leaders we needed on board? The easier question might be, "Who didn't we need?" On a small campus, where one voice can ring loudly, I had to knock on doors in every campus building.

Obviously, there are some who must be part of the process: the chancellor, the vice president of student affairs (to whom athletics reports), the current athletics staff, and student-athletes. But like any major change, I needed to look beyond a tight inner circle to others:

• The faculty and faculty senate (including the chair)
• External advisory board members
• Academic advising center employees
• Finance and operations personnel
• Student affairs personnel who interact with students in a variety of groups and organizations and can help spread the word
• University relations, which can help broadcast the new identity
• Enrollment management personnel
• The student government association.

I realized that every stakeholder had to be engaged in some form. I made formal presentations with the chancellor's involvement, made myself accessible, and talked to people. This included everything from sitting down for a cup of coffee with a faculty member to e-mailing an important group with an update.

It helped a lot that I have interests and goals beyond athletics. I was more than willing to participate on campus committees, and did so whenever asked. Serving as the campus co-chair for the "No Place for Hate" committee, and on the campus-wide Strategic Planning Committee were two ways that I engaged folks apart from athletics. It was important for my colleagues to see me as multi-dimensional. I think that added credibility to my thoughts on advancing the role of athletics on campus.

One thing I did a lot of was answer questions. Some of the initial comments I heard from long-standing faculty and staff included the following:

• Will our athletics program look like the program at main campus? No.

• Then what will our athletics program look like? I explained Division III athletics and its goals and philosophies.

• How will you get anyone to come here to play sports when our facilities aren't very good? Compared to some campuses, our facilities are quite adequate.

• We've never been able to recruit TO the student body, only FROM the student body. Our recruiting strategies are going to change drastically.

• Are you going to charge admission to games? No.

Getting coaches on board was just as important. Over the phase-in period, I slowly raised expectations and provided more training (on recruiting, scheduling, hiring assistant coaches, and so forth). If coaches were not managing their team dynamics effectively, or refusing to get out and recruit to make the team's talent better, then we met individually until it became obvious the coach didn't fit.

When hiring new coaches, I made a deliberate effort to find those who met three values: highly ethical, good teachers of the game, and concerned about the development of the whole person. I have told all of my coaches that I will not be evaluating them on wins and losses. They do a fine job of placing that pressure on themselves. Instead, I will evaluate them based on the quality of the student-athlete experience.

I do that in several ways. First, I look at the academic trends of each team to determine if coaches are recruiting student-athletes who can be successful at Abington. Second, I examine the retention of players from year to year. As I say to my coaches all the time, "You don't win with freshmen and sophomores, you win with juniors and seniors."

Third, I try to attend nearly every home game. I watch the competitive effort that each team gives and the ways the student-athletes engage with their coaches, their teammates, and the opposing team. You can tell a lot about a player's satisfaction level by just paying attention to their interactions on game day. I also try to get to know the student-athletes and be approachable and supportive.

Finally, we have begun using a postseason survey that measures student-athletes' satisfaction with every aspect of their experience. I use this feedback constructively to improve the student-athlete experience the next season.

I see our coaches as my team, and it's my job to help them grow. I preach that building a team first is more important than wins and losses. My philosophy is that if you create a positive team environment where everyone believes they are contributing, winning will eventually take care of itself.

ADDITIONS
Another important part of the plan was adding sport teams and staff. NCAA Division III schools are required to offer a minimum of 12 sports by 2010-11, and we were at eight with men's soccer, men's golf, men's and women's basketball, women's volleyball, baseball, softball, and co-ed tennis.

To decide what to add, we tried to be logical and discover what would be most attractive to our current and prospective students. Women's soccer existed as a club sport, so it made sense to immediately elevate it to varsity status (although it took four years to find a conference for them to play in). The NCAA does not recognize co-ed tennis, so we separated into men's and women's teams. That put us at 10 programs.

Suburban Philadelphia has long been known as a hotbed of high school lacrosse, and a stroll through the Penn State Abington student parking lot told us that our students were no exception. There were lacrosse stickers and decals plastered on every third car. The fact that we shared our outdoor fields with the Abington boys' lacrosse club made it that much easier. Also, the typical lacrosse student-athlete tends to be an above average student, satisfying my desire to raise our athletes' academic profile. Adding men's and women's lacrosse was an easy decision.

Finally, we all agreed that adding another individual sport made sense, and again, one that tends to produce highly motivated student-athletes. While we did not have access to a decent track, there are tons of places to run in our area. In the fall of 2009 we began womenís cross country and in the fall of 2010, we will begin men's cross country. In three short years, we had grown to 14 teams.

As part of our NCAA compliance, I also hired a sports information director, a full-time athletic trainer, and a compliance officer. It's hard to imagine a college athletics program without any of those positions, but I did have to explain the importance of each to constituents.

LEADING CHANGE
Throughout the transformation, I have tried to lead in a way that takes into consideration the difficulty of change for most people. The book Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence (Harvard Business School Press, 2002) by Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee states that how leaders behave is more important than the process of change.

One quote from the book has always stayed with me: "Leaders who can stay optimistic and upbeat, even under intense pressure, radiate positive feelings that create resonance. By staying in control of their feelings and impulses, they craft an environment of trust, comfort, and fairness."

I often refer back to the vision I had for the program from the day I stepped on campus, and I haven't wavered from it. In return, I think that gives my staff and colleagues a sense of groundedness and a confidence that we are making progress. It also reminds coaches why working at Abington can be a good career move for them. They have an athletics director, an administration, and a community that supports them as they learn and grow on the job.

For both me and my staff, it's great to have the opportunity to be a part of a growing campus. At Abington, everyone in athletics understands and is excited about the school's mission. And that makes it an exciting place to work.

SIDEBAR: New Trends
While Penn State Abington may be unique in some ways, it is not unique in its idea to use athletics to help with enrollment challenges. Over the past few years, more and more enrollment and athletic staffs at small colleges have been working together to help their schools. Enrollment terms like "paid admits" and "yield" are becoming part of the athletic director's vocabulary.

A recent problem for many institutions is not knowing how many students will show up on the first day of class. More students are applying to multiple colleges and delaying their deposits. Many enrollment managers speculate that this could be because students and their families are waiting to see what the financial aid packages turn out to be.

Athletics can help with this through their recruitment of student-athletes. In most cases, if a coach has developed a relationship with an incoming student-athlete and knows that athlete will be a member of the team, the student will be on campus the first day of classes.

A strategy some private campuses are using is to turn a portion of their enrollment goals over to their coaching staffs. For example, a coach must bring in five, 10, or 15 new students per year, and that goal is tied to their retention as coaches or their bonus.