Minutes of the September 6 IAAC meeting 1. The meeting came to order at 10:50 a.m. Members attending were Athletic Director Steve Kirkham; Faculty representatives Jackie Berning, Jim DesJardin, Travis Peterson, and Charlie Shub; Academic Coordinator Greg Augspurger; Financial Aid representative Jennifer Fisher; Staff Representative Ruth Jackson; and Student Representative Justin Bailey. VCAF Brian Burnett also attended. 2. Vice Chancellor Burnett spoke to the committee. He noted that both he and the chancellor (who couldn't attend owing to a meeting in Denver) are pleased with the department and the AD. The academic performance meets or exceeds expectations. The leadership team is pleased that coaches here understand that academics comes first. He related an incident of academic dishonesty where the coach went to the professor with an attitude of "how can I help support you in doing your job" instead of an attitude of "how can we make this go away" Burnett is also pleased with the improvements to facilities, past and planned. He cited the softball field at 4-diamonds and mountain lion stadium (the soccer field) noting that the stadium is also used by intramurals and ROTC and brings in rental revenue. He is looking forward to the interim field house/arena and is committed to a project for a 5000 seat facility further north on Nevada avenue. In a cooperative venture, the university is providing fill dirt to the North Nevada Urban Renewal project in exchange for excavation on the field house site. Burnett also reported that President Brown is being extremely supportive in terms of endowments for scholarship dollars and funds to assist with the interim arena/fieldhouse. He would like to see additional progress at the conference level with scheduling to reduce missed class time. 3. Director Kirkham gave his report. a. He thanked the committee members for attending the meeting. b. New Personnel: He reported on the hiring of Mark Misch as the new cross country/track and field coach. Misch started the program at Southwest Baptist college and has been involved with athletes in action. He will be assisted by former UCCS student athlete David Harmer and Capt. Kimberly Hansel-Hageman. Hageman's expertise is in the field events. Kirkham hopes Misch will grow the program to about 70 student athletes. c. New Sports: UCCS will be adding women's soccer in fall of 2008. Plans are to have a coach in place by January 1. There have been over 50 e-mail inquiries by prospective student athletes regarding this program. Baseball is a possibility in the 4-5 year time frame. Wrestling is also a possibility once there are appropriate facilities. All three programs can help in terms of diversity and title IX considerations. The campus is already doing well in terms of title IX and will, after women's soccer is added, have a 56/44 participation ratio (with a 60/40 student body ratio) and is also doing well in terms of other title IX requirements including equal accessibility, equal travel, equal salaries. d. New Facilities: The current gym is inadequate. There were over 300 attendees at a volleyball match during a school holiday. The interim arena/fieldhouse will not be ready until sometime during the 2008-09 school year. At least one basketball contest will be played at the USOC. Athletics will provide bus transportation for students wishing to attend. Athletics will also explore providing shuttle transportation to mountain lion stadium at the 4 diamonds complex for weekend soccer matches. Four Diamonds also has a field that can be converted to an NCAA baseball field if and when baseball is added. Athletics has established an exchange program with school district 11 where they can use the softball field at 4 diamonds and UCCS can use the track facilities at Garry Berry Stadium. e. Conference realignment: With the departure of Fort Hays State and the addition of Western New Mexico, UCCS has been reassigned to the eastern division of the RMAC. That generally means less distant travel as four of the other six eastern division teams are in Denver. That lessens missed class time and travel expenses. f. Fundraising: The department is holding its silent auction and golf tournament on Sunday, October 7 and Monday, October 8. They also are selling meal discount cards as a fundraiser. The department is advertising for a full time fundraiser and currently has 20 applications. g. Improvements in grades, winning percentage, financial aid, budget, and transportation: Kirkham noted that along with the improving GPA (over 3.0 for every team) the winning percentage has also improved and is now over 50 percent. He is also pleased that the financial aid packages dollar amount has nearly doubled since his arrival here. He is also pleased that he has been able to accomplish this progress while paying off a departmental deficit he inherited when he arrived three years ago. Transportation in 15 passenger vans is a thing of the past. The department is using either busses or SUVs. 4. Shub gave the FAR Report. Shub reported that it was good to be back from sabbatical. He applied for the second NCAA Division II FARA Fellows program, and was selected for participation. The activities included developing a list of action items that Shub shared with the AD and the conference. Many of them have been accomplished. His sabbatical plan also included some outreach to FARs at other RMAC schools. He reported being able to attend a few away games while doing that outreach. Shub also noted that he had done exit interviews by e-mail and was able to provide what Director Kirkham described as valuable information for the athletics department. 5. Justin Bailey gave the SAAC (Student Athlete Advisory Committee) report. He reported that SAAC had met twice. Movie night at 4 diamonds was again cancelled, this time owing to lightning. The Boo-Zar is planned again for this fall. 6. New Business: The committee decided to work on having committee policies and processes incorporated into the campus policies structure. Shub will find current practices and policies and forward them to Debbie Lapioli for editing into appropriate form. The committee can then act on them. The committee also discussed exit interviews. The national SAAC has provided some models and Shub has used a shorter, more open ended, approach. The committee agreed to solicit input from the SAAC. Owing to lack of time, the committee did not discuss improving campus involvement, degree completion and postgraduate awards participation, conflict avoidance registration, and changing the meeting date. These items will be carried over to the October meeting. 7. At 12:10, the meeting was adjourned.