Athletics added to Southeast objectives

Southeast Missouri State's Board of Regents wanted to make sure athletics wasn't going to be forgotten in the university's strategic planning process.

On Friday, the board added an objective specific to athletics to its five other Priority One objectives. The initial objectives are being discussed in meetings over the next few weeks as a strategic plan is developed for presentation to the board in December.

"Athletics will have a prominent place in the consideration when we get into the funding and putting in priorities in the overall plan of how we're going to deal with the university's overall advancement the next five years," said Al Spradling, board of regents member and a member of the university's athletics subcommittee.

"One of the things we wanted to make sure that [athletics] apparently hadn't been listed or, if it had been, it sort of escaped in the report to the university faculty and the State of the University address, and we wanted to make sure it didn't get lost in all of this," he added.

The other objectives listed as part of the strategic plan deal with academic programs, support for faculty research and creative activities, student support services, campus life and enrollment management to achieve "optimum size, quality and diversity of the student body."

The wording adopted by the board Friday includes evaluation and enhancement of programs, enhancement of funding and facilities, improvements in student-athlete graduation rates and improvements in relationships with fans and benefactors.

While the other objectives are being discussed in a series of meetings, university president Dr. Kenneth Dobbins said, "This one, since the board gave it to us, there won't be any changes to that. It will just be inserted under Priority One."

The objective was given unanimous consent by the board and supported by Dobbins, he said.

The university earlier this year as part of the strategic planning process hired Carr Sports Associates to conduct a review of the athletics program. The report was published in May and inspired some action by the board in the spring, including a number of steps for Title IX compliance and the budgeting for an associate athletic director to deal with external issues such as marketing and fundraising.

Carr provided his report as some basic structure for a larger strategic plan. Dobbins expects that plan to begin development around January.

"We already have done some action, adding new coaches," Dobbins said, referring to the part-time assistants added in four women's sports — soccer, softball, gymnastics and volleyball. "We are getting the advertisement ready for the associate athletic director for external operations. We're going to touch on some of those issues that Bill Carr had even before the strategic planning process."

Dobbins said the associate AD position could be hired after the first of the year and also assist in the strategic plan.

"I can tell you that we're probably going to start the strategic planning process for athletics in January," Dobbins said. "That's the timeline I discussed with the board. We could be finished by the end of February, so we would have input in the budget review process."

Spradling said the Carr report offered "good recommendations" that will be useful in the planning process.

"We need to stick with it, and we need to be able to add the resources they've recommended over the next couple of years," he said.

Since the Carr Report was presented, Southeast received its penalty from the NCAA regarding the women's basketball program and was informed that a new investigation has begun with men's basketball. In addition, athletic director Don Kaverman, in the final year of his contract at Southeast that expires June 30, 2009, interviewed for a position at another university before withdrawing from consideration. Kaverman said Tuesday he had not talked with Dobbins or been briefed about the board action taken Friday.

"If athletics is mentioned in the strategic plan, that would be great," Kaverman said.

Asked if some of the uncertainty with the department might slow the strategic planning process, Spradling said, "It certainly highlights a couple of issues we're maybe going to have to concentrate on a little more and focus on that instead of some of the other plans we want to make, but overall I don't think so. That's just part of the process and hopefully we can work through all of those issues at the same time."