· CoSIDA Executive Director John Humenik has accepted an invitation to attend a meeting in Dallas on Sept. 15th that will include Executive Directors of several management and coaches associations in intercollegiate athletics.  The event will be hosted by Dutch Baughman, Executive Director of the Division 1A Athletic Directors Association (Division 1-A ADA). Attending will be Grant Teaff (AFCA- American Football Coaches Association), Jim Haney (NABC-National Association of Basketball Coaches), Beth Bass (WBCA- Women's Basketball Coaches Association), Patti Phillips (NACWAA- National Association of Collegiate Women Athletics Administrators), Bob Vecchione (NACDA) and Amy Perko (Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics) in addition to Baughman and Humenik.   

· John Humenik and Director of Internal Operations Will Roleson will represent CoSIDA in Indianapolis on Sept. 19 at the NCAA Inclusion Summit: Challenges, Champions, and Collaborative Strategies - Moving Toward a More Inclusive Culture.  

· John Humenik has received an invitation to attend the annual Divisional I-A Athletic Directors meeting in Dallas on Sept. 26-27.  This marks the fourth year he has received an invitation on behalf of CoSIDA to attend this event.

· CoSIDA President Tom Di Camillo will represent the organization at the Rural Community College Alliance on Sept. 27-28 in Oklahoma City.  He will talk about two-year school involvement in CoSIDA's Academic All-America® program. Di Camillo will also represent CoSIDA at the NCAA Division II Conference Commissioners meetings in Indianapolis on Oct. 12-13.  

· John Humenik, Director of External Affairs Barb Kowal and Will Roleson will attend meetings at the NACDA headquarters in Cleveland on Nov 1-2 with the NACDA leadership group.  Various details and transition matters will be discussed as they relate to the final pieces of the CoSIDA/NACDA partnership. That partnership was approved by the CoSIDA Board in December of 2008 and will combine the annual CoSIDA Convention within the NACDA Convention in Orlando in June of 2013.    

· Third Vice President Eric McDowell  (Union- NY) will coordinate our continuing education inititiatives this year.  If you have ideas or want to coordinate a session, please contact him at mcdowele@union.edu.

 · The first continuing education session for the membership is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 22 - with a time and details TBA. The session is entitled "Your Complete Guide to Using Mobile Location-Based Apps" and will involve presenters New Media/Tech Committee chair Chris Syme and SCVNGR Universities and Schools Specialist Jeff Kirchick. The basics of using the fast-growing mobile location-based applications, from controlling privacy settings to setting up exciting promotions and contests, will be discussed. Information on this session will be sent to the membership in early September.

 · John Humenik and Barb Kowal continue to work with NewTek, CoSIDA's official continuing education video archive  provider, to finalize several  taped sessions from the Marco Island Convention to use as online presentations this fall.  These convention sessions will be provided to our membership from late September-December as the prominent piece of our fall/early winter continuing education initiatives for the 2011-12 year. The CoSIDA Board would like to thank NewTek for its support of this continuing education initiative.

· Barb Kowal continues to work with the Membership Services Committee (chaired by Blake Timm of Pacific- Ore.) and the New Media/Technology Committee (chaired by Chris Syme) the newly established CoSIDA Online Reference and Research Library.  This is an online continuing education/ professional development membership reference tool which we feel will be helpful to our membership, as well as others in the athletics community.  

     The group held an August 12 conference call and decided to divide the Resource Library content collection. Kowal will oversee collecting and organizing all crisis and strategic communications/professional development/continuing education articles and resources for the Library. Volunteers from the Membership Services and New Media committees will work on gathering and organizing articles, links and videos on all other Resource Library topics to assist Kowal in building the site (topics such as how-to's, office development, website management, social/digital media, etc.).  The goal is to have the RL framework built by the end of December and ready for membership use at that time, knowing that this will be a continual work in progress. Once the RL is available, volunteers from the committees will monitor the RL and advise on new articles, resources to be placed and information to be cycled out.

      We encourage you to visit and check it out here: http://cosida.com/resourcelibrary/.   If you have any ideas how to make this reference site better, please contact Kowal at barbkowal@cosida.com. 

NAIA  

· On August 11th, the NAIA-SIDA Board conducted a conference call. President Jay Stancil (Union- KY) reported that the group discussed constitutional updates, task forces and committees for the upcoming year,  NAIA- SIDA's Facebook page, an NAIA/CoSIDA membership drive and determining those within NAIA-SIDA who would become part of the selection committee that would determine the Academic All-America teams for the "College Division Program" (NAIA, Canadian, two-year schools) for the 2011-12 academic year. 

· Per a request of Executive Director John Humenik, the NAIA SIDA Board will be reviewing the recent "Division II Model Strategic Communications Document" that has been approved by DII-SIDA, DII ADA, DII Conference Commissioners and DII Presidents Council. In the review, the NAIA SIDA Board will determine if it is appropriate to seek to work with the NAIA  national staff and NAIA ADs, commissioners and Presidents groups to develop a similar and appropriate document for the NAIA.  

Strategic Branding/Marketing & Communications Based

· At the Marco Island Convention the Strategic Branding Committee, chaired by then-1st VP Tom Di Camillo, made a recommendation to the Board that CoSIDA's organizational title be reviewed and analyzed as part of an ongoing strategic branding  review process. First VP Joe Hornstein (UCF) was then appointed by President-elect Tom Di Camillo to chair the Strategic Branding Committee for the 2011-12 year.   

· Executive Director John Humenik is in the process of providing the CoSIDA Board of Directors and divisional leadership a three-year update/progress report on various initiatives established for action in the CoSIDA Strategic Master Plan, a plan that the Board adopted in June of 2008.  Starting with the first week of August, Humenik is taking one of the established initiative each week and providing a update on progress with regard to that initiative after three years and focus points for the remaining two years of the plan.

· The CoSIDA leadership has endorsed the upcoming national event surrounding all divisions of football competition - the  Ronald Reagan Centennial Coin Toss.  This event is a national undertaking and will be occurring at high school, college and NFL stadiums during the weekend of September 23-26. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and the Ronald Reagan Centennial Celebration are promoting the Reagan Centennial Coin Toss, and the Foundation is encouraging CoSIDA contacts at NCAA Division I FBS, Division I FCS, Division II, Division III and NAIA institutions as well as elected officials and veterans to help execute the celebration of President Reagan's life and love for football during the aforementioned weekend of Sept. 23-25. The Reagan Foundation will provide to each participating school a commemorative medallion and a PA announcement and video board messages. View the press info, tribute video, PSAs, and more information HERE.   

· During the month of August, 22 CoSIDA-based stories appeared on NACDA's Daily Review email blast.  There were 21 Daily Review emails sent during the month. Due to this effort, that primarily came about due to CoSIDA's decision in Dec. of 2008 to become an affiliated partner within the NACDA  organizational umbrella, several thousands of university and athletics administrators are being exposed to professional and organizational news that primarily only appeared on the CoSIDA website in the past and was thus only viewed by our membership.

· Also in August, three CoSIDA-based features/stories were posted on NCAA.com and/or NCAA.org and circulated a total of 14 times on the NCAA Daily News Direct email blast.  

· During August, 30 articles were posted on our organizational website (CoSIDA.com). In addition, the CoSIDA Twitter page (www.twitter.com/CoSIDAnews) had 234 tweets/postings in July all of them informative nature with breaking news and timely topics for athletic communication professionals.

· REMEMBER- Always, refer to our Academic All-America® program and its respective Academic All-District  teams, Academic All-America® teams and Academic All-America® Hall of Fame, with our sponsor Capital One placed prior to all "Academic All-America" mention. 

· The master schedule for the nomination deadlines/ team announcements for the 2011-12 Capital One Academic All-America® program  is now available, along with the 2011-12 Academic All-America Committee list and the list of newly-aligned districts. Find this important planning information here: http://cosida.com/Awards/allamerica.aspx

     Please note also that there are new district alignments in place for the AAA program; district alignments are different for each of the four divisional programs (NCAA DI, DII, DIII and College Division). Please review those district alignments as they relate to your specific division hereCoSIDA Board and Academic All-America® Committee leadership here:  http://www.cosida.com/   

 · Nominations for the Capital One Academic All-America Hall of Fame (Class of 2013) will be open from Thursday, Sept.  1 through Friday, Nov. 4. Find detailed information on nomination policies, nomination materials, etc., HERE  

 · The Board and AAA Committee remind CoSIDA members that CoSIDA's "Academic All-America®" mark is federally registered. As such, CoSIDA members must help the Board and AAA Committee monitor the wrongful use of this registered trademark. If you see any other organizations, including coaching associations, using this registered trademark, immediately contact CoSIDA Executive Director John Humenik (jhumenik@bellsouth.net) and AAA Committee chair emeritus Dick Lipe (Bentley University) at rlipe@bentley.edu. We will have our legal counsel, Collegiate Images, follow up w ith a letter regarding infringement of our federally registered mark and they will be asked to "cease and desist" from future use of that mark.  

· Many times during the year we find that our own membership is using "Academic All-America®" in releases that they prepare for student-athletes receiving academic achievement awards from other organizations - when in fact those organizations refer to their awards as "All-Academic," "Scholar-Athlete," "Academic All-Star," etc.  We remind  CoSIDA members be cognizant of only using "Academic All-America®" in relation to CoSIDA's program. There are NO exceptions and you should make sure your administrative staff and coaches understand that they do not have the right to take another award that is being presented for combined academic/athletic excellence by coaches' associations/organizations and change it to "Academic All-America®" instead of its appropriate title as determined by that awarding organization.   

FAME (Female Athletics Media Relations Executives) News  

· FAME has been a subset group of CoSIDA since the 1990's and there is new leadership in place for this academic year. In August, the FAME leadership held two conference calls with interested group members - across all divisions of CoSIDA - and put together a 2011-12 steering committee to work on issues specific to female athletic communicators.  

     In an August 18 conference call, coordinated by Co-Chairs Natalia Ciccone (Pac-12 Conference) and Diane Nordstrom (Wisconsin), FAME conducted the following business: reviewed a new mission statement (revised in July 2011); is accepting comments/review on the statement while also sharing the statement with FAME's founding members; reviewed four new FAME logo designs; broke the steering committee into sub-committees; established a FAME newsletter for 2011-12 and collected ideas for the first newsletter which will appear by mid September; discussed St. Louis Convention programming ideas; and discussed 2012 CoSIDA Special Awards candidates. In addition, a new Yahoo or Google group is being set up for FAME members to replace the former WoSIDA listserv email communications platform. After the initial goals and membership growth are met, future plans include the establishment of a FAME mentoring program.

     FAME set up deadlines and appointed sub-committee chairs to get its new organizational goals off the ground. Coordinators/chairs include: CoSIDA Special Awards - Diane Nordstrom (Wisconsin), who chairs this committee, along with Ann King (The Sage Colleges) and Jeri Thorpe (Arkansas); CoSIDA Convention matters - Natalia Ciccone (Pac-12 Conference) and Wendy Mayer (Purdue); FAME newsletter - Amanda Dahl (NAIA); FAME social media - Chevonne Mansfield (Southeastern Conference) and Danielle Wright (Kentucky State). Other steering committee members include NaDean Schroeder (Minnesota State Moorhead), Kenisha Rhone (Belmont), Romana Noble (South Carolina State), Anna Cooper (Ithaca) and Kelcey Zutavem (Central Methodist [Mo.]).

     The group will work closely with Director of External Affairs Barb Kowal on any outreach/

survey/publicity/ website information, while Cindy Fotti from Columbia College (Mo.) is the CoSIDA Board liaison to the group and CoSIDA 2nd Vice President Shelly Poe (Ohio State) is an advisor as well. 

Eclaro Sports

· John Humenik worked with Jay Williams, VP of Eclaro Sports, CoSIDA's official professional development partner,  and CoSIDA's various divisional leadership Presidents/Chairs to have each of them send a letter to their respective membership groups regarding the confidential Eclaro resume bank that is being developed for our membership.  This resume bank, which now has more than 400 personal resumes from CoSIDA members,  can then be made available - in a confidential manner- to schools/AD's when a communications-based opening occurs.