UNC Designs Program to Develop Leadership  
By ROBBI PICKERAL, Staff Writer

CHAPEL HILL -- North Carolina's athletics program is known nationally for its success and its tradition.
Soon, athletics director Dick Baddour hopes it will be known for something else: leadership.
 
This fall, the school will formally unveil the Carolina Leadership Academy, a first-in-the-nation program that will be mandatory for all scholarship and walk-on first-year athletes, all coaches, assistant coaches and athletics department staff. A select group of upperclassmen began taking the classes this summer.
 
The program is meant to build team unity on Carolina's fields, courts and tracks and in its pools. It's also designed to build successful students in the classroom who will go on to become successful people when their athletic careers are over.
 
No academic credit will be given for participating in the program, which will last about an hour a month for first-year athletes.
"It's going to help us on the field -- I can already see that, said Tar Heels offensive tackle Skip Seagraves, a three-year starter and one of about 20 football players who took part in beginner classes this summer. "But I've learned so much about leadership, it's a life-long lesson. I'll take a lot of things and use them when I'm done playing, too."
 
Two anonymous donors have agreed to fund the program at a cost of $60,000 to $80,000 per year for at least five years. The Academy has the support of the school's coaches, sports captains and Faculty Committee on Athletics, Baddour said.
 
What makes the program different, said Jeff Janssen, a consultant who is co-developer of the program and its lead instructor, is its scope and its ongoing nature. Other universities teach leadership to athletes via occasional classes and weekend retreats, said Janssen, who wrote the book "The Team Captain's Leadership Manual" and who teaches leadership seminars all over the country.
 
But when he and senior associate athletics director John Blanchard researched other universities' leadership programs, they didn't find any that could potentially encompass all four years of a student-athlete's career. Or a program that also includes coaches and staff.
 
"I believe it's the kind of thing where our student-athletes will say, 'Wow, I got something from that,' " said Baddour, who came up with the concept more than two years ago.
 
He thinks it could lure coaches to Carolina, as well. "If you're an assistant coach, and you're looking for a way to get into [head] coaching, you say, 'OK, if I come to North Carolina, I'm not only going to get the opportunity to work with an experienced head coach, but the athletics department is going to offer me this leadership thing,' " Baddour said. " 'So when I go out and apply for a job, I'm going to be able to acknowledge that I've had this training that's going to help me be a good head coach.' "
 
The Academy will foster leadership in athletes within a three-tier system. All first-year students will take about an hour's worth of classes once a month that will include interactive workshops, speakers, case studies and reading.
 
During one summer class, for example, Janssen led football players through "The Mine Field Experiment." One player had to, within a limited amount of time, verbally guide a blindfolded partner through a 6-foot-by-40-foot rectangle of disc-shaped cones.
 
"The blindfolded players are like the freshmen coming on to the team, who don't know about the obstacles out there in the ACC and need upperclassmen to help guide them through,'' Janssen said.
The second tier, which is optional, is for designated "Emerging Leaders," a select group whose coaches believe will eventually develop into captains. They'll meet once about every three weeks, Janssen said. The third tier, "Established Leaders," also optional, is for captains from all 28 sports. They'll meet even more frequently, and have a chance to share the problems, success and frustrations of leadership.
Meanwhile, head coaches, assistant coaches and staff will meet within their own groups, and have curricula based on their job levels. Their participation is mandatory each year.
 
The new program will be evaluated, and tweaked, by the department annually.
 
"When you think of North Carolina, we want to have leadership as a core value,'' Baddour said. "When you think of us, you think of competitive success, a program of integrity, a competitive program, and [a place] where they develop true leaders.
 
"That, in a nutshell, is what it's all about."