Focus EMU Online, Weekly Issue

NCAA President Myles Brand visits EMU today

NCAA President Myles Brand visits campus today and will discuss the state of the NCAA and current trends and issues in intercollegiate athletics.

DISTINGUISHED GUEST: Myles Brand,
president of the NCAA, will speak today
at 2 p.m. in room 201, Welch Hall.

The Eastern Michigan University Athletics Department hosts Brand, who will speak at 2 p.m. in room 201 Welch Hall. The presentation is open to the entire campus community as well as the general public.

Brand also will attend a Champions Dinner set for this evening. That dinner, beginning at 5:15 p.m. at the EMU Convocation Center, is by invitation only and will honor EMU's student-athletes and coaches, highlighted by the record-setting eight Mid-American Conference team championships in 2006-2007.

"The department of athletics is very honored that Dr. Brand will visit Eastern Michigan," said Derrick Gragg, EMU's director of athletics. "This will be the first time an NCAA president has been on our campus, and we are looking forward to his joining us for a presentation in the afternoon and also to attend our Champions Dinner to honor our student-athletes and coaches that same evening."

Brand assumed his duties as president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association Jan. 1, 2003. He is the fourth chief executive officer of the NCAA.

Called by some the "education president," Brand focused most of his efforts over the last four-and-a-half years on academic reform and integration of athletics with the mission of higher education. He has provided leadership and oversight to the most comprehensive initiative on academic reform undertaken by the NCAA in decades. At the same time, Brand has pressed for greater presidential leadership and institutional accountability over the financial underpinning of intercollegiate athletics.