Trustees and Presidents: A Podcast for University Leaders On College Athletics

Leading Change in Division III: Athletics, Enrollment and the NCAA's Role for College Presidents

My guest today is a game-changer—both on the national stage and on his own campus.

He’s one of the leading voices in NCAA Division III governance and transformation. As the newly appointed chair of the NCAA Division III Presidents Council, he represents over 430 colleges and universities and 44 voting conferences, advocating for student-athletes and shaping the future of college sports. Oh, and did I mention? He’s also the DIII representative on the NCAA’s prestigious Board of Governors.

But that’s just the start. Back at Juniata College in Central Pennsylvania, where he’s the 12th president, he’s spearheading a renaissance in campus athletics. Under his leadership, Juniata has added five new athletic teams in the past four years, opened a cutting-edge $4 million sports facility, and remains the home of 3-time National Champions in Women’s Volleyball.

Balancing NCAA-level leadership with transformative campus innovations? That’s a story worth telling.

Duration:: 33m
Broadcast on:: 05 Jan 2025
Audio Format:: other

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to the podcast, I'm Karen Weaver. My guest today is a game changer, both on the national stage and on his own campus. He's one of the leading voices in NCAA Division III governance and transformation. As the newly appointed chair of the NCAA Division III President's Council, he represents over 430 colleges and universities and 44 voting conferences, advocating for student athletes and shaping the future of college sports. Oh, and did I mention he's also the D3 representative on the NCAA's prestigious board of governors, but that's just the start. Back at his campus, to Indiana College in Central Pennsylvania, where he's their 12th president, he's spearheading a renaissance on campus in athletics. Under his leadership, Junyatta has added five new athletic teams in the past four years, wow, and opened a cutting edge $4 million sports facility and hosted three-time national champions in women's volleyball. Balancing NCAA level leadership with transformative campus innovations, that's a story worth telling. Please welcome Dr. James Trowa to the podcast. - Well, thank you, Karen. (laughing) - I wasn't expecting that, I'm gonna be-- - No! (laughing) - Well, I feel like it's worthy because you're so much, I want my listeners to understand how, integrantly, you've been involved in this whole space. And so, Jim, where should we start? We've talked about a variety of things, enrollment and retention, challenges D3 is facing financially the athletic training crisis. I would do want to talk to you about that. And of course, the house settlement case, where would you like to start? - Well, I mean, I first want to say, I mean, I don't know if I'm an anomaly or not, but I mean, growing up in a sports household where athletics was always part of my upbringing, I played sports, I went to college to play college baseball, I have coached at the division one level, division three level, I have supervised athletics. My entire career has been in higher education, so I've been around athletics, and when I became president here at Juniata, I remember getting an email from my commissioners asking if I would want to participate on the president's advisory group, which is a group that sits underneath president's council. And I said, "Oh my gosh, I'd love to do that." And that turned into an appointment to president's council, which turned to, I was vice chair, and now I'm chair, and then just this fall, I got elected to the board of governors. But I say all that because I see it as part and parcel of my responsibility, something we just talked about off camera, which is a huge part of the undergraduate experience of a lot of students. And those student athletes deserve, I think the kind of attention that presidents and ADs and vice president for student lives and provosts should give them for this commitment they are making to their own discipline, if you will. And here at Juniata, about 40%, 38% of our students are participating in a division three sport. So it's a big part of what we have here. And so I feel that it's a bit of an obligation for me to understand that dynamic and that paradigm to the best of my ability. So I can then deliver to them the experiences that they deserve as a division three student athlete. So my involvement, yes, I've loved athletics and it's just part of who I am, but it certainly intersects with the job that I have now and has for a very long time. So that's what I just want to start there and just say I'm passionate about it. I think this is Percy, why the NCAA has continued to ask me to do different things. It's because not all presidents are in this space who maybe want to be in this space. But I do because not only do I love it, but I think it's an important part of what we do as college leaders. - Could not agree more, could not agree more. - And so one of the things I know you want to talk about was enrollment and retention. And I think this is where I think the rubber hits the road right now for a lot of us in leadership positions is how do we leverage the sports teams that we have to drive enrollment at a time when demographics are working against us? And I just saw something yesterday where I believe in the state of Pennsylvania from 2023 to 2041, we are going to experience a 17% drop of high school graduates. In our region, it might be even a little bit higher. I'm talking the Northeast region. And so you can't just depend on academic programs anymore to attract students. You've got to have other experiences for which athletics is one. And you asked me ahead of time, how else do you deal with this? Well, we brought in addition to the five new athletic teams, we brought things like our pet ban, which we didn't have. We have brought a mock trial team. We have, we brought e-sports in. So you think about these experiential moments for students in addition or very much like athletics to help drive interests in your institution, which hopefully if they're connected through all of these different groups, they're going to then retain, which is maybe even the more important part because getting me here for one year doesn't help anybody. It's about their retention and to see them cross the finish line as a graduate is at the end of the day, the most important thing. - Yeah, sorry. - And so in cutiata, we put a lot, a lot of emphasis on that. And 96% of our students are graduating in four years or less. We take great pride in making sure once we get them that they are moving along that timeline to get done so they can go out and achieve their dreams. - How have you found from your enrollment folks, the actual getting kids to sign on the bottom line and come on to campus? I mean, we can talk about applications, we can talk about yield, but getting them to come on campus, have you had any issues with that first transition? - Well, if you're talking about the first transition of how we get them, if we can get them to Huntington, Pennsylvania, I don't know if you know where Huntington, Pennsylvania is, we are in a very central remote part of Pennsylvania, beautiful part of the state, not the region, but we have to get them here first. And if we can get them here, we've got a much better chance. I think it goes from, if they just apply online, I think the percentage of yield goes to something like almost 50%, if we can get them to Huntington, Pennsylvania. So that's the first goal is to connect them with our campus, because not only are they attracted by our location, but they meet our people. And Karen, you know better than I, you've been in this business maybe a little bit longer or not. It is the human relations that ultimately drives a student to connect at levels that are going to be meaningful for them, whether it's a coach, a faculty member, an administrator like myself or their peers. And so here at Junyatta, when you walk our campus, you are going to meet people who are smiling, who are going to connect with you, who are going to ask how you're doing, who are going to take time from their phone or their earbuds to look at you. And that's not the case at every place. And so that culture, that the values around kindness and connection are super important at a lot of places. I mean, it's certainly what drives us here at Junyatta. - And then you've got the ever-ending challenge of what academic majors are you're going to offer, what's good for the future? How do we attract a declining pool of 18 to 22 year olds? How are you addressing that? How are you dealing with that? - Well, I mean, like a lot of other schools and some who haven't are I think are seeing the downside, whether they're closing or having to close programs, we, geez, I think we're going on our seventh year of almost every year introducing something new and different. So it doesn't mean that maybe a brand new academic program, but it's recasting that program in a more contemporary fashion. It's maybe bringing back a program that we discarded 15 years ago because they're word students, like criminal justice. We brought that back after discarding it. It's one of, it's doing tremendous now. We're looking to add nursing, which is a huge change for us. We've been very hard in the sciences. We send a lot of school and send to graduate school for research and medical school, pre-vet, pre-dental, that sort of thing. Nursing's a little bit different and we hope to receive our full accreditation from the state of Pennsylvania in January or February. We've already hired our director. We've already built our simulation lab and we'll be able to advertise once we get that. So Karen, at the end of the day, you've got to continue to evolve. You've got to continue to offer programs that are in demand. And yes, you've got to do some of the hard work, which not a lot of my colleagues love to do. And that is to eliminate, stop some things that you've been doing for a period of time. Higher education is well-known for ad, ad, ad. We're not well-known for take, take, take away, which gets us into trouble. And so we've got to be creative and entrepreneurial and thinking about ways that we change what we do while still remaining committed to our core mission of providing a first-rate quality education for our students. Not just education, but the experience for our students 'cause we know that it's more than just about what takes place in the classroom. It's about what takes place on the athletic fields in the choir room, in the mock trial courtroom. All those types of experiences builds out the experience that we talk about when you're considering junior out of college. - So let's talk about the $4 million athletic facility in the addition of five teams. How were those decisions made? - Well, the facility was directly related to us adding men's and women's lacrosse and having a below subpar field for our men's and women's soccer team. So, Karen, one of the things that I think I can say this now for, you know, I'm in my 12th year as president here. If we're gonna do something, I wanna do it at the very best level. I don't wanna do it just to do it. So if we're gonna bring in lacrosse, let's make sure that we have a facility that exceeds the expectations of our student athletes, our alums and et cetera. So we brought those teams in, we needed a quality place to play, we've had soccer teams, we felt like our field was subpar. So we, in a very short amount of time, got some great philanthropy from our donors and friends to build what is, I think, one of the best facilities in our region called Gible Field. Just sits up there. And so bringing in new sports, you think about, oh, well, it's only a required head coach and maybe a trainer and equipment. Well, the facilities and keeping up with facilities are huge, but if you are successful, those rosters, and lacrosse have some larger rosters, they can certainly help you drive your first-time full-time freshmen in your overall enrollment. And that was the intent of bringing in lacrosse and men's and women's golf, which we used to have. We brought it back and we added men's swimming to, we already had women's swimming and we continue to look at opportunities. You look at women's wrestling and the growth of that, flag football and where that's going. So we continue to look at opportunities that fit with where we are and what facilities we have available. And if we don't have them, can we build them? Do we have the support and the interest in going that direction? - So you mentioned cost and obviously many presidents, think it's easy to add a sport, but they do forget about all of the tangential costs, facilities, staffing, support personnel, travel on the road, those types of things, it's crazy. And now the Division III membership has decided that mental health support is incredibly important. It is, but that costs money too. We're also gonna talk about the new athletic training report. How do you factor all of that in? - Yeah. Well, fortunately, and I can say this because I'm knee-deep in the NCAA's that from Charlie Baker down to Luis McCleary, who's the VP for Division III, I personally think they do an amazing job. Charlie walked into a very, very challenging situation with some very challenging issues in the courts that we are currently working with our congressional delegations to help with these situations. But there's no question, Karen, that for those of us who are interested in providing intercollegiate athletics, the costs of doing so continue to rise. There's no doubt about it. And the challenges that our students are bringing to us today are greater than ever, and you mentioned mental health. I mean, when I think about when I was a dean of students some years ago, even when I started as president here back in 2013, it pales in comparison to what we see today in terms of the needs and the demands on our coaches, on our faculty, on our counseling staff. It just requires greater empathy. It requires better listening. It requires better development of our coaches, our faculty and the like. And fortunately, where I started was that the NCAA is aware of this. They want to support us. I believe they have supported us. Budgetarily, they're funding mental health support at levels that we haven't seen before, and they will continue to do so. The Enrichment Fund for Division III has got $2,000 per institution allocated in right now, which every school can get, which is terrific. And I think that's only gonna increase. So as you may know, Division III, most of our money goes to provide our championship experience, which, at Juniata, Three Peating and Women's Volleyball, just last weekend, we've been fortunate to experience this. They do an amazing job of lifting up our student athletes in these biggest moments. And I didn't quite get it when I started with the NCAA, 'cause like 80% of your money going to that experience, does every school get a chance to experience? And the answer is, yeah, the participation in that experience is much higher than I thought. And I'm reluctant to give it, but I wanna say it's in the 70, 80% of our institutions have had a championship experience, which is tremendous. - Yeah. - The other part of the budget goes to what I referenced in Richmond Funds, which goes to professional development, which goes to training opportunities, which goes to helping our faculty athletic representatives attend the national convention to get an understanding of what we do at the NCAA and the intersection of our institutions and the NCAA. So I think we are very cognizant. We as in the NCAA and we as college leaders of the needs and the demands, and then trying to make sure our budgets align to deliver for our students what they deserve in terms of support. - I gotta believe though, and obviously new revenues is always a wonderful thing, but I gotta believe that as you add more teams, especially large teams like La Crosse, soccer, you still are gonna feel like we're still behind the eight ball in terms of support. And so how do you grow that at the rate that you're adding athletes and adding teams? - Well, you gotta grow it with non-athletes in my judgment. I mean, so the other revenue that you generate needs to come from some of the newer academic programs that you're gonna be introducing. We have brought in because of the growth of our athletic program. We started to see a demand for things like exercise science, which we did not have, but it fits well with our health professions background and soul. And so we just brought that program in last year. I think we had initial, you know, eight, nine students. We've got over 20 in exercise science in one year. So those, yes, some of those are athletes, but that's where you need to drive revenue to help support those teams that you're delivering. And then the other one is through philanthropy. And my CFO and I were just looking at some pie charts the other day, what we used to get 10 years ago from net revenue has basically stayed about the same. And you're saying, well, how do you keep your doors open if your net revenue hasn't gone up? Because, you know, health care goes up and compensation goes up, utilities go up. Well, the piece of the pie that has grown has been philanthropy. I mean, what I do as a college president has changed dramatically in the last 10 years. I have to be much more external focused and talking to donors and friends about the needs that we have as an institution and giving larger amounts of dollars to support what we are doing here as an educational institution. And a lot of that goes to college affordability. Some of that goes to facilities. Some people love to support a particular athletic program. Some want to support our library that we just renovated. So the job, Karen, as a college president, I would say continues to evolve, but I see no end in sight that the demand on our time to be much more externally focused and driving new resources, whether it's private gift or grants, whether it's federal, state, gifts and grants, driving resources to better support our institution is gonna be at the forefront of what we do as educational leaders. And that's just a reality. And if you don't want to do that or you're afraid to ask for money or talk to be with money, this gig may not be for you. It's no longer, unfortunately, maybe, no longer sort of that the intellectual academic at the helm anymore. It is at some places and don't get me wrong. It's not an either or. It's not binary. Well, you're this or you're that. I'm just saying the need for skills, the need to have the want and the willingness to maybe be that both that intellectual college president, but also the next day get on the road and go talking with donors and your board members about the resources that are needed for your institution is super important. Well, when I'm reading your accomplishments at Juniata, I'm floored by the number of boards you currently sit on or have sat on. And I'm wondering if that serves two purposes. It helps you meet more people, but it also helps you develop avenues for potentially asking them for help, right? - Yeah, I think if I'm going through the rolodex in my mind and boards that I've sat on, to be perfectly honest, there's really two reasons why I extend my time into kind of that volunteer space. Number one would be to connect with my community. Locally here, my wife and I led the local United Way campaign when I was on the United Way board. I've been on the board until just recently my term expired at the hospital. That hospital is critical for us here locally. I'm on a local bank board, which yes, has some connections to the college and we occasionally would want their support. The second one, so that's the first one, is that it binds me and it helps build relationships, Karen, and I'll go back to what I said before. It's one of the most important things we do as leaders is to have relationships, which then supports the institution. But the second part of it is, and I hope, whenever my time is done, whenever it is, that the visibility at the NCAA, at CIC, at NICU, all of these boards that I currently sit on or have been on ACUP, or my state association where I was chair, it brings visibility to the college. I can care less about what it brings in Jim Troja, but when the junior out of president is involved with CIC or in the NCAA, there's an awareness that comes with the president of this institution being involved in those national conversations. And so I'd love to give them my time to get it personally and selfishly, helps my institution get its brand out there, if you will. - Well, I think that ties in nicely with what you said about the evolving role of the president, especially on a small campus. You know, so many people I've talked to who became D-3 presidents, came from division one. Perhaps they were a dean or vice president. It was their first shot at being a president in D-3. And they thought of D-3 as a mini D-1. And they really didn't have an understanding of how different the dynamics are on campus. If you could offer some advice to a new president who wants to look at a D-3 presidency, is perhaps coming from D-2 or D-1, what kinds of things would you tell them? - Oh my gosh. So I talk a lot about this, Karen, 'cause I do some numerous Zoom calls with a couple of classes around higher education and administration, including my alma mater, University of Kansas. I just did one a couple of weeks ago. - Wonderful. - And because I do, we need good people in this profession. We need good people who want to be in leadership positions and the demands of the job, often I think dissuade people from wanting to participate in this lifestyle. And it really is a lifestyle. It's not, if you think it's a job, you're probably not gonna be successful. You have to go in with both feet, particularly at a place like Juniat or smaller institutions. And I would characterize my position here at Juniat as I'm more of a mayor than I am. I mean, I'm a college president, but I feel like I'm more of a mayor because I deal with all kinds of issues that you wouldn't normally think a college president would have to deal with. But I'm currently negotiating with our town around acquiring some property that could be helpful to us. I sit down with our County Commissioners and our local city council, borough council members to talk about roadways and safety measures and lighting and all kinds of things. So my advice would be that if you are ready to have a day that looks like none other every single day, then maybe this job is for you. And I have to, I always say, and it's why I sometimes get emotional when I'm talking to younger people about it is because I can honestly say that when my feet hit the ground each morning and I think about the day Ed, I do so typically with a smile. Is every day great? No. But the opportunity to think about changing young people's lives and the obligation that I have to try to make things better is something I take really seriously, but also with a side of fun. I mean, my job is fun. I get to go and celebrate three consecutive national titles with my volleyball players and their parents, which are accomplishments, but they're going to be caring with them for the rest of their lives. The traditions that I take part with our students on. I mean, you are part and parcel of their, this four year moment. And when they graduate, they come back and see you. You've impacted their lives. Our faculty impact their lives every day. And so I'm grateful that it found me, if you will, 'cause listen, I'm a criminal justice background. I have my master's degrees in counseling. I had zero idea what I wanna do in my life until some really, really great mentors helped steer me in this direction. And I try to do that with young people that really said, "Geez, Jim, how'd you get to where you are?" And I talked a little about it. Also, you don't plan it. It's, I can't talk to many presidents who said, "Yep, this is exactly what I thought I was doing." It is so rare you meet somebody and say, "Yeah, I wanted to be a college president." Most of them say, "Nope, I was teaching and somebody asked me to do this." And then my portfolio grew to that. And next thing you know, a headhunter's calling me. And that was my story. And so I would tell young people to consider it, to think about it, to think about a trajectory toward it. Karen, the funny thing is, and you probably know this through the literature, people who say they wanna be a college president rarely achieve it. The people who ascend to the leadership roles, it typically finds them because they're not worried about trying to get that rung on the ladder to get to the top. They get to the top because they're performing, because they're noticed, because they're doing great work. And then somebody asks them to consider a new opportunity or a different opportunity. Those are the people that make it to the top, are the ones who don't do so necessarily in a very intentional purpose of weight. - Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that's true of so many of the presidents I've interviewed. And I think that's why, like you, I believe so thoroughly in giving people opportunities to prepare ahead of time, to say, what if this happens? What skillsets do I need to have? What knowledge and understanding do I need to have? I think that's a great way to think of it, yeah. - And I just spoke to our December graduates here Sunday. And I shared with them what employers are looking for in today's graduates. And Karen, it goes, it speaks to what I think are the most important characteristics of a college president today. And these are the intangibles that I think can't be found typically on a resume. These are what we used to call soft skills. I would call them essential skills of just things like passion and integrity and character and trustworthiness and leadership and team building and collaborativeness. I mean, all of those things that tend to happen on teams and get back to the athletic piece of being a good team player, a good team member are absolutely essential for the role that I play as a college president. I have to work with my faculty. I have to work with my town. I've got to work with my board. I've got to be a good communicator. So interpersonal skills, first and foremost, would be the thing that I would say to any young person, develop those skills, be a good human. The competencies that you develop over time will help support you, but you got to start with a good foundation of just being a good human being. And people will find you and give you other responsibilities will ultimately to, you know, an important position within an organization. - Could not agree more. So as we wind down our conversation, I always have to ask if you were king for a day in college sports and you could help presidents understand what they need to plan for but also what they might hope for in the next five years in college athletics. What would you say? - I mean, first thing that comes to mind is engagement. I mean, we have experts in Indianapolis with the NCAA who this is what they do for a living every single day. And as college administrators, we have a multitude of responsibilities and constituents to serve. The NCAA, we are a membership organization and they are here to serve us. I would say to any president, AD, faculty athletic representative is to lean in to the NCAA and the expertise that they bring to us. And so read the materials that they send out publicly. Go to the website. There are all kinds of resources that are available through the NCAA. There are webinars that they produce. There are funds that are available to our institutions. And I think what I have seen is a lot of my colleagues who maybe don't have the athletic background that I do, just don't know and aren't aware that these resources exist here. And so I would say take advantage of what the NCAA does for us. So, I mean, I think selfishly, I mean, if I were to think about it in a completely different way of what I might, with one wand, I mean, we've got, there's all kinds of litigation, which we could talk for another day about what's happening with some of the pressures on Capitol Hill. But this notion around students as student athletes, as employees, I would want to make that go away because that would be absolutely detrimental to Division III athletics, particularly. I mean, it would be so hurtful to us that that ever were to pass. And so we are working with the NCAA. We do have congressional delegations that are on this, but that's the one piece out there that's hanging over us that could really, really make life very, very difficult for our institutions. - Yeah. Do you worry about the future of Olympic sports? In what way? - Well, one of the things that people keep saying is that if we have to share revenues with football men's basketball, women's basketball, there won't be money left over to fund women's sports, Olympic sports, that type of thing. - Not yet. I mean, I don't think so. I mean, we've got the big house case that's currently being played out. And I think we're gonna be hearing something in the spring relative to NIL and the sharing of revenue and all that. I want to get through that and let's see where that lands. I mean, certainly, Karen, the landscape of the NCAA and the challenges that are in front of us are deep and wide. And I couldn't think of, and I've had a chance to meet him and talk with him and be in the room with him. I can't think of a better person in Charlie Baker to help navigate this political morass because he's been there and done that from his time as governor. And so I've got a tremendous amount of faith in him and our leadership with the NCAA to get us to where we need to be. But make no mistake, it's challenging. And that's why I think leadership at college universities need to be engaged. You need to be reading up. You need to be having conversations with people like yourself who are in this space to better understand how your institution is going to interact with the challenges that are facing the NCAA and our student athletes. - Yeah, this is my mission. This is what I'm all in on for sure. - I appreciate you for bringing you to light and having these dialogues and these conversations. And again, I'm happy to help any way that I can in whatever role I can play. - Well, Jim, you've been a tremendous guest, deeply insightful because of your career path, but also your passion for people. So I really appreciate you taking some time to talk with my audience today. - Absolutely, Jim. Good luck, good luck with things. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]

My guest today is a game-changer—both on the national stage and on his own campus.

Balancing NCAA-level leadership with transformative campus innovations? That’s a story worth telling.