April 15, 2010
DeKALB, Ill. - After undergoing an 18-month, campus-wide effort to study its intercollegiate athletics program as part of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I athletics certification program, Northern Illinois University has received the highest classification of "certified," the NCAA announced Thursday. This is the third time Northern Illinois has successfully gone through the organization's certification process.
An institution that has been certified is considered to be operating its athletics program in substantial conformity with all of the operating principles set forth by the NCAA. Those standards cover four basic areas: governance and commitment to rules compliance, academic integrity, fiscal integrity, and equity, welfare and sportsmanship.
"I'm obviously thrilled to have this NCAA `stamp of approval' on the way we are doing business in our department of athletics," said NIU President Dr. John Peters. "I want to thank the Steering Committee, led by Matt Streb and Tom Krepel, for all of their hard work throughout this very thorough process. Athletics Certification is an important benchmark for our program and a valuable exercise for any institution."
Northern Illinois began the certification process in September 2008 as a committee composed of faculty, staff, students and athletics administrators put together an extensive self-study of NIU Athletics which was submitted to the NCAA Certification Committee. In the self-study, Northern Illinois examined the department's adherence to the operating principles over the last 10 years.
In September 2009, a peer review team composed of athletic administrators from other NCAA schools, spent three days on the Northern Illinois campus meeting with faculty, staff, coaches, student-athletes, administrators, donors and others, including Peters and Associate Vice President and Director of Athletics Jeff Compher. The peer review team presented its report, along with NIU's self-study, to the Committee on Athletics Certification, which informed Peters of the Huskies' "certified" classification this week.
Compher expressed his gratitude to those who took part in the latest Athletics Certification effort, as well as those who paved the way to certification at NIU over the last 10 years.
"This was a case of people from across the university coming together to successfully complete an 18-month project, and we are extremely pleased with the results," Compher said. "Certification involved an exhaustive look at Northern Illinois Athletics over the last 10 years, so the credit goes not only to those who are here now, but to the people who have been here during that time, including [former athletic directors] Cary Groth, Jim Phillips and their staffs. They are the people that created the stability in our department.
"Credit also goes to the entire NIU NCAA Certification Steering Committee, led at first by Tom Krepel, who did the original draft of the self-study, and then by Matt Streb, and to Janaan Mickey, who was responsible for gathering the information from the sub-committees and providing it to the NCAA in the proper format."
As part of its ongoing commitment to the four operating principles studied during certification, Northern Illinois will continuously monitor its standards and progress on the plans for improvement submitted during the process.
NCAA Division I institutions are currently certified once every 10 years. A link to the NCAA's certification announcement is available at www.ncaa.org (click here).
-- NIU --
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