Sacramento, CA . . . The Commission on Athletics (COA) is responsible for the administration of intercollegiate athletics at California’s 103 athletic-playing community colleges. The commission has systematically increased the number of sport opportunities for women and provided critical leadership to the state’s two-year colleges.
"Since the 1950’s, the COA has strived to provide opportunities to participate in intercollegiate athletics that effectively accommodate the interests and abilities of students of both sexes. The COA has strongly advocated that overall allocation of all benefits, opportunities, and treatment afforded student athletes of each sex be equivalent," said COA state commissioner Joanne A. Fortunato, Ph.D.
Consider the following:
-The state office convened and developed a blue ribbon panel that created the COA gender equity self-review manual, a resource document that assisted colleges in the completion of its own college plan, consistent with the legislation;
-Distributed the manual and posted an e-version of the manual on its statewide website;
-Convened seminars and workshops sponsored by the COA’s gender equity committee to review data, share findings, and develop strategies to increase women’s sport opportunities at the local level (e.g. three-part test);
-Added women’s water polo, women’s badminton, and women’s golf since the mid-1990’s;
-Guaranteed that facilities at championships for women are comparable to those utilized by men;
-Restructured the awards program for its 16 sanctioned championships to ensure equality between men’s and women’s sports awards;
-Rotated the starting time for women’s and men’s championship sports that share a single venue;
-Coordinated the establishment of conference-based gender equity committees;
-Launched a statewide mandate to ensure conference-driven program review. One of the major standards of review is evaluating member colleges on Title IX issues;
-Hosted two major keynote sessions on gender equity at past state conventions;
-Secured Donna Lopiano of the Women’s Sports Foundation as its gender equity keynote session speaker at the March 2002 convention;
-Secured CSU Fresno president John Welty as a keynote speaker at the March 2002 convention. He is expected to discuss his university’s efforts to ensure compliance with Title IX legislation;
-Maintains and offers subscriptions to its resource and referral library of gender equity information, including copies of the federal legislation;
-Increased each college’s contiguous recruitment area to encourage the recruitment of more women;
-Will reconvene the Gender Equity Committee at the state level;
-Has developed a strategic plan for the next three to five years with one of its components focusing on gender equity.
The 2001-2002 academic year is the 25th celebration of women’s intercollegiate athletics sponsored by the Commission on Athletics. The yearlong celebration will culminate with a special women’s athletics exposition and bruncheon on Friday, March 22, 2002 as part of the statewide COA convention.
For more information about the COA’s gender equity leadership efforts, please contact Commissioner Joanne A. Fortunato, Ph.D., at Jfortunato@coasports.org. For more information about the COA convention please visit www.coasports.org.
COA
