The revised by-laws of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics (COIA) called for a restructuring of the COIA Steering Committee into nine positions to better enact COIA business and to help ensure a smaller, more committed and active representation of the COIA member universities’ interests.

The following individuals have been elected to fill the nine positions on the 2017-18 COIA Steering Committee.  We are very pleased to have such distinguished, and committed, faculty scholars on the new Steering Committee.

Please contact any of the new Steering Committee members if you have any questions, and please give them thanks for their willingness to serve.

Jane Albrecht (Wake Forest University)
Lawrence Gramling (University of Connecticut)
Scott Gwozdz (University of Colorado at Boulder)
Joan King (Louisiana State University)
Bonnie Ownley (University of Tennessee): Chair
Kelley Withy (University of Hawaii): Vice-Chair
Adrien Bouchet (University of Tulsa)
Bill Weibold (University of Missouri)
Mike Bowen (University of South Florida): Immediate Past-Chair

The site and dates for the 2018 Annual COIA Meeting have been set:  the meeting will take place at the University of Colorado at Boulder, at meeting rooms in the Williams Village North (https://living.colorado.edu/content/williams-village-north) on campus, April 20-22, 2018.

REGISTRATION
To register for the meeting, please email Jane Albrecht (albrecht@wfu.edu), with your plans to attend.  A small registration fee, $20 or less, to cover food costs during the meeting, will be collected at the meeting.  Please bring cash to cover that fee.

HOTELS
COIA Steering Committee member, and member of the UC-Boulder faculty, Scott Gwozdz, has arranged the following two hotel possibilities for meeting attendees: the Best Western Plus Boulder Inn, and the Rodeway Inn & Suites Boulder Broker.  Please click on each hotel name to find a description of each, pricing, and to make your reservations.  You should plan on flying in to the Denver Airport, and taking a shuttle, or renting a car, from there to Boulder.  Its about an hour’s shuttle trip ($33 one way, or $60 round trip), or drive, to Boulder.  The shuttle will take you directly to one of the hotels. There’s more information on this on the Best Western Plus Boulder Inn link.

Please make plans to attend the meeting!  There is much to discuss, people to meet, and even more to do!  The meeting agenda will be posted here as it develops.

If you did, thank you for “Marching for Science” on April 22, 2017.

The 2017 (14th) Annual Meeting of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics (COIA) was held from Friday, February 17, through Sunday afternoon, February 19, 2017, at Wake Forest University, Winston Salem, NC.  The meeting was graciously and well hosted by WFU Professor of Romance Languages, and long-term COIA Steering Committee member, Jane Albrecht.  Our efforts were guided by consultant Jean Frankel at the meeting.  We owe her a deep debt of gratitude for her productive efforts on our behalf.

The Meeting report was compiled in two separate documents, one for each day of the meeting:

The report for the Saturday, February 18, 2017, sessions is HERE.

The report for the Sunday, February 19, 2017, sessions is HERE.

MISSION and VISION STATEMENTS

At the meeting, a new mission statement was written and approved for the coalition:

“To promote academic excellence, integrity and student well-being in intercollegiate athletics.”

The meeting also produced a vision statement for the coalition moving forward:

“Faculty mobilizing faculty to enhance the student-athlete experience.”

Core Values and Beliefs

As developed by those attending the annual meeting, February, 2017:

• Student Athletes are Students First
• Academic Integrity
• Scholarship and Critical inquiry
• Diversity and Inclusiveness
• Financial Responsibility and Sustainability of Intercollegiate Athletics
• Transparency and Open Dialogue
• Protection of Student health and Safety

ELECTIONS

Following the passage of the bylaws’ revision, elections are now scheduled to fill the Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary and five remaining Steering Committee positions.

We will soon be asking for a vote on the nominations for the following EIGHT Steering Committee positions for COIA, as designated in our bylaws:

 * The Immediate past chair position will be filled by Outgoing Chair Mike Bowen who has agreed to serve, his term expiring 2020.

ACTION ITEMS

Besides electing our Steering Committee, here is a tentative table of the actions decided upon at the annual meeting for over the summer and beyond:

The Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics (COIA; the Coalition) is an alliance of faculty senates from NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) schools. COIA’s mission is to provide a national faculty voice on intercollegiate sports issues. Areas of concern include academic integrity and quality, student-athlete welfare, campus governance of intercollegiate athletics, commercialization, and fiscal responsibility. The Coalition is committed to the development of effective strategies and proposals for significant, long-term reform in college athletics. COIA works with university faculties, administrations, trustee boards, and national associations concerned with higher education, to implement these strategies and proposals.

Currently, FBS schools that have faculty senates are eligible to be members of COIA. During the past several years, COIA has produced a number of white papers and other documents that lay out recommendations for reform. These recommendations offer best practices that can be used by schools to examine their own policies and practices with regard to intercollegiate athletics. Many of these recommendations have also been discussed with the NCAA as possible action items.

The faculty governance body of any NCAA FBS school can be a member of COIA (see How to Join COIA). We are an ad hoc group and operate without staff or budget. Our direction is determined by our member senates, and we warmly welcome any NCAA Division IA senate that votes to join the COIA on the basis of a general agreement with the principles laid out in our policy papers and reports.