Division II is doing its part to help increase the number of women in athletics administration through an annual $50,000 grant to the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletics Administrators.

NACWAA uses the grant to expose aspiring women to new opportunities by giving a representative from each Division II conference the chance to attend the organization’s annual convention and gain valuable networking and mentoring opportunities with veteran female administrators.

“From the cards and letters we get in return, we keep hearing that it’s one of the best experiences these women have,” said NACWAA Executive Director Jennifer Alley.

The grant aligns with goals in the Division II strategic plan regarding diversity and inclusion and spreads the opportunity among all member conferences. Grant dollars fund the recipient’s NACWAA membership dues, and registration, travel and lodging for the NACWAA convention. The idea is to give first-time convention attendees an opportunity to evaluate their strengths and identify areas in which they can improve their professional resumes.

For example, Florida Tech’s Jen Seidel, the assistant director of athletics for compliance, said while she appreciates her current position, she wouldn’t mind being upwardly mobile on the athletics administration ladder.

“I’d like to stay in compliance but I would love to move into an associate AD position in the future,” she said. “Attending the NACWAA convention was an aspirational type of experience, since there are so many influential women in leadership roles both in athletics positions and in corporate America there.”

The initiative may help correct a gender imbalance in the Division II leadership positions. Only about 20 percent of Division II athletics directors are women, though that percentage is much higher than in Division III (though lower than the nearly 28 percent in Division I). The percentage of female associate athletics directors is about 46 percent in Division II, and about 34 percent for female assistant ADs. Those percentages also are slightly lower than in Division I but higher than in Division III.

“But the point is to do better as an Association,” said Division II Vice President Mike Racy. “Each division devotes efforts to diversifying leadership in intercollegiate athletics, and the NCAA overall offers many programs and initiatives to help along these lines. But the Division II governance structure has committed to the NACWAA grant for the specific purpose of giving women at the administrative grass-roots level the chance to broaden their experiences. They may not all stay in Division II, but we hope they advance in their careers and give college athletics administration overall a more diversified perspective.”

Jill McCartney, the assistant AD for compliance at Metropolitan State, said there’s no better opportunity than the NACWAA convention to interact with so many women involved in intercollegiate athletics.

“It’s great to hear their stories, get advice, see what the opportunities are out there for yourself in the future. That was especially valuable to me as someone who just started in the administrative ranks,” she said.

It also was refreshing to McCartney to see the number of women in one place. Before she came to Metro State, she coached at a school with very few women peers – and there weren’t many more in her conference or even in the region, either. “But NACWAA really brings that point home – that there are a lot of us; it’s just that we might not meet one another in day-to-day interaction,” McCartney said.

As compliance specialists, both Seidel and McCartney used the NACWAA experience to reaffirm their strengths and develop areas in which they hadn’t had much experience.

“I need to concentrate on the business side of athletics, working with what you have in a smaller Division II school,” Seidel said. At Florida Tech, she finds herself wearing different hats – she was strictly compliance at Virginia Commonwealth, her former employer, “but here I also do a little game management, student services, and I’m the acting senior woman administrator,” she said. “But that can only help me in my future path. I didn’t have this opportunity at VCU (to attend NACWAA), and having it here is a great experience.”

“The NACWAA sessions helped identify areas that will be useful in pursuing career opportunities,” said McCartney. “For example, we’ve been without an assistant AD here for a while, so I have been doing some of the game management and marketing, and I’ve become more aware of the areas that don’t fall under compliance. These things aren’t officially under my job title, but they are part of getting the job done, and the NACWAA experience has helped me in that regard.”

For more information about the NACWAA grants, contact NACWAA Executive Director Jennifer Alley at jalley@nacwaa.org or Division II Director Terri Steeb at tsteeb@ncaa.org.