Michelle Detwiler can explain in several ways why diversity is important — data, research, her experience as a basketball student-athlete at Eastern Nazarene, to name a few.
She chose to share an anecdote from her current role as the student-athlete development and experience coordinator at Washington University in St. Louis, a role made possible through the NCAA's Ethnic Minorities and Women's Internship Grant.
Detwiler recalled being in a room full of student-athletes when someone asked a freshman student-athlete of color who plans to a be a neurologist a simple question.
"Why?"
The pre-med major explained that she spent a lot of time at the doctor growing up but never saw a doctor who looked like her. It fueled her to be a small part of the solution for someone else.
"She said, 'I want to be a doctor that I didn't get to see when I was younger,'" Detwiler recalled. Detwiler told the student-athlete: "You have taught us everything we need to know about why diversity is so important."
Detwiler is part of diversity-centered efforts being made in college athletics. So is Oliver Moe, a former track and field student-athlete at Colgate who's currently a coordinator of student-athlete success and leadership at Arcadia; Litzy Renteria, a former acrobatics and tumbling student-athlete at Limestone who's now a creative services intern at Converse; and Stephen Peters, a former baseball player at The City College of New York now serving as the director of events management, facilities and student engagement at Mary Baldwin.
All four are part of a group of more than 25 people who benefit annually from the NCAA's Ethnic Minorities and Women's Internship Grant. The grant is designed to provide financial assistance to the Division II and III member schools and conferences that are committed to enhancing ethnic minority and gender representation in entry-level athletics administrative positions. (Applications for this year's grant cycle close Jan. 31. Learn more about the Division II grants here and the Division III grants here.)
"In the NCAA space, the higher education landscape, the folks who are working in the higher education landscape should be reflective of the student body, the folks you're working with on a day-to-day basis," Moe said. "I think it's incredibly important to have folks who are working with student-athletes who look like the student-athletes, share similar experiences because that's the best way to help people feel like they're seen, they're heard, they're listened to. Give them folks around them they can lean on. If we can have marginalized people in positions to help support other marginalized identities, there's been tons of research that shows that diverse teams perform better in a lot of ways, so it's incredibly important."
The Ethnic Minorities and Women's Internship Grant also includes funding to attend an NCAA Convention — as well as additional professional development funding — where its recipients come together to network, learn and grow in their shared mission to provide the best student-athlete experience on their respective campuses.
"It's imperative," Peters said of the grant's purpose. "Especially for those who want to work in college athletics but don't really know what they want to do, being able to be part of this grant and being able to see more people of color, see more people like us in those roles and being able to learn and grow in those positions … it's really important to have that professional development to be able to better assist student-athletes down the road and be a better administrator."
"I realized the importance of this grant when my student-athletes at WashU kept telling me, 'We're so proud to have you represent us in these different spaces,' whether it's here at the Convention, the conference level, anywhere in the room where major decisions are being made, that really shows how important these things are," Detwiler added. "I think that it's important to let the student-athletes know that there are people who represent them, that it's growing and that whatever job they decide to go into will probably be pretty similar. A lot of the student-athletes I work with at WashU are going to be lawyers, doctors, CEOs … so it's not necessarily about getting them used to being one of the only (people of color) but letting them know there are different programs out there to help diversity and inclusion in your workplace."
Renteria described her experiences at the 2023 Convention, surrounded by others passionate about college athletics, as an "I-made-it moment." She attended several education sessions, networked with others in her specific industry and, through her grant cohort, was reminded that she's not alone in her career journey.
"I'm a Latina woman, and we don't see a lot of us in the industry, so it's nice to know that other people can relate. Being in a room full of people who look similar is pretty powerful," she said. "It's very empowering."
