The College is about to embark on a comprehensive, year-long evaluation of its athletic program to be in compliance with new National Collegiate Athletic Association requirements, College Spokesman Roland Adams said.
Dartmouth will conduct a self-evaluation and submit its findings to the NCAA, which will then determine whether to award the College NCAA certification, conditional certification or no certification, Adams said.
"We do the study, but the NCAA issues accreditation based on an evaluation of our study," Adams said. "They not only look over the self-study, but meet with a lot of different groups."
The NCAA approved a new certification process in 1993 that evaluates all NCAA Division I institutions in four areas: academic integrity, fiscal integrity, gender equality and rules compliance, Adams said.
"This is a new process which all NCAA Division I institutions must go through," said Deputy Provost Bruce Pipes, who chairs a steering committee overseeing the evaluation. "Eventually, everyone will go through it. Columbia just completed the process last year."
Deputy Athletics Director Robert Ceplikas said, "The NCAA prescribes the format to follow and puts out a handbook" outlining the guidelines the College must follow while conducting its evaluation.
Adams said while the NCAA will hold discussions with student athletes, administrators and faculty members, the College's self-study serves as the foundation of the evaluation.
A steering committee and four subcommittees composed of College administrators, athletic directors, professors and students were recently established to conduct the evaluation, Adams said.
Pipes said the purpose of the steering committee is to overlook the four subcommittees and integrate their individual reports into a comprehensive report that the NCAA will evaluate next fall.
The steering committee is made up of 14 administrators and faculty members including College President James Freedman and Dean of the College Lee Pelton.
The subcommittees will investigate each of the four areas in which the NCAA will evaluate the College. This fall, the subcommittees will plan their evaluations, which they will conduct from January to March.
The steering committee and subcommittees have each met once to organize and prepare for an orientation visit by a field representative from the NCAA on Nov. 3, Adams said.
The steering committee will review the subcommittee reports and begin preparing the final report in the spring, Pipes said.
The report will be completed and submitted to the NCAA in the summer, and next fall the NCAA evaluation team will come to the College, he said.
According to Ceplikas, only rarely do institutions not receive certification, although it is fairly common for schools to receive conditional certification.
"My understanding is that no Ivy has gotten no certification, but quite a few have gotten conditional certification," he said. "The area that gives most schools problems is gender equity."
He said Dartmouth embarked on its own gender equity evaluation three years ago, making gender equality in athletics one of the College's strongest assets.
"We are way ahead of most NCAAs in sports offerings for men and women student-athletes," Ceplikas said. "The Ivy League tends to be ahead of most schools already, but the internal study that we did enabled us to fine-tune our program and make sure we don't leave any stones unturned."
As part of the athletic department's efforts to enhance gender equity, they have upgraded two women's sports, volleyball and softball, to fully-funded varsity sports, Ceplikas said. The men's volleyball team was downgraded from fully-funded varsity status to club status.
The College currently has 16 women's varsity sports teams and 16 men's varsity sports teams. The athletic department told the Dartmouth last winter that it projects that 45 percent of varsity athletes will be female in 1996-97.
