Lapchick Promotes Sports for Social Change, Equality in Athletics During "A Bridge Across the Racial Divide" Presentation at Northeastern State - Sept 22, 23

Lapchick Promotes Sports for Social Change, Equality in Athletics During "A Bridge Across the Racial Divide" Presentation at Northeastern State - Sept 22, 23

TAHLEQUAH -- Richard Lapchick is committed to educating people about the ways that sports can help develop better citizens.

Human rights activist, pioneer for racial equality, internationally recognized expert on sports issues, scholar and author, Lapchick is often described as the racial conscience of sport.

My lifes work involves using sport as a vehicle to bring about positive social change in communities, he said in a recent website article published by the University of Central Florida, where he is an endowed chair.

This Sept. 22 through 23, Lapchick will share his message at Northeastern State Universitys campuses in Broken Arrow and Tahlequah in a special presentation entitled, A Bridge Across the Racial Divide. Sponsored by the Sequoyah Institute at Northeastern State University, both programs are FREE and open to the public.

Lapchick will speak at 5:30 p.m. in the Building A Auditorium at NSU-Broken Arrow on Sept. 22, and at 10 a.m. on Sept. 23 at the NET Auditorium in Tahlequah.

As chair of the DeVos Sport Business Management Program, founder and director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, and as president and chief executive officer of the National Consortium for Academics and Sports, Lapchick advocates the importance of athletes completing their education. He is the only person named One of the 100 Most Powerful People in Sport, a designation he earned six consecutive years, to head up a sport management program. In addition, Lapchick is widely known for bringing different racial groups together to create positive work force environments.

Were trying to develop better people, better citizens. We want our graduates to evolve into community servants, interested in all of humanity, Lapchick says of the NCAS program based at UCF.

The DeVos Sport Business Management Program at UCF is a landmark program that focuses on the business skills necessary for graduates to conduct a successful career in the rapidly changing and dynamic sports industry. In keeping with Lapchicks tradition of human rights activism, the curriculum includes courses with an emphasis on diversity, community service and philanthropy, sport and social issues and ethics in addition to UCFs strong business curriculum. The DeVos Program has been named one of the nations top five programs by the Wall Street Journal, the Sports Business Journal and ESPN The Magazine.

Notably, he is also the son of Joe Lapchick, the famous Original Celtic center who became a legendary coach for St. Johns University and the New York Knicks. Richard Lapchick is married to Ann Pasnak and has three children and two grandchildren. Knicks
In December of 2006, Lapchick, his wife and daughter and a group of DeVos students formed the Hope for Stanley Foundation which organized groups of student-athletes and sports management students to go to New Orleans to work in the reconstruction efforts in the devastated Ninth Ward.

Other notable accomplishments from the Lapchick file:

• Helped found the Center for the Study of Sport in Society in 1984 at Northeastern University. He served as director for 17 years and is now the director emeritus. The Center has attracted national attention to its pioneering efforts to ensure the education of athletes from junior high school through the professional ranks. The Centers Project TEAMWORK was called Americas most successful violence prevention program by public opinion analyst Lou Harris. It won the Peter F. Drucker Foundation Award as the nations most innovative non-profit program and was named by the Clinton Administration as a model for violence prevention. The Centers MVP gender violence prevention program has been so successful with college and high school athletes that the United States Marine Corps adopted it in 1997. Athletes in Service to America, funded by AmeriCorps, combines the efforts of Project TEAMWORK and MVP in five cities across the nation.
  
  
• Was the American leader of the international campaign to boycott South Africa in sport for more than 20 years. In 1993, the Center launched TEAMWORK-South Africa, a program designed to use sports to help improve race relations and help with sports development in post-apartheid South Africa. He was among 200 guests specially invited to Nelson Mandelas inauguration.
  
  
• A prolific writer who 13th book was published at the end of 2007. Lapchick is a regular columnist for ESPN.com and The Sports Business Journal, and a regular contributor to the op-ed page of the Orlando Sentinel. He has written more than 450 articles and has given more than 2,700 public speeches.
  
  
• Considered among the nations experts on sport and social issues, Lapchick has appeared numerous times on Nightline, Good Morning America, Face The Nation, The Today Show, ABC World News, NBC Nightly News, the CBS Evening News, CNN and ESPN.
  
  
• Consults with companies as an expert on both managing diversity and building community relations through service programs addressing the social needs of youth. He has a special expertise on Africa and South Africa. He has made 30 trips to Africa and African Studies was at the core of his Ph.D. work.
  
  
• Before joining Northeastern, was an Associate Professor of Political Science at Virginia Wesleyan College from 1970 through 1978 and a Senior Liaison Officer at the United Nations between 1978 through1984.

Honors and Awards

• Named both the Central Florida Public Citizen of the Year and the Florida Public Citizen of the Year by the National Association of Social Workers in 2006.
  
  
• Inducted into the Sports Hall of Fame of the Commonwealth Nations in 1999 in the category of Humanitarian along with Arthur Ashe and Nelson Mandela and received the Ralph Bunche International Peace Award.
  
  
• Joined Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson, Arthur Ashe and Wilma Rudolph in the Sport in Society Hall of Fame in 2004.
  
  
• Won the Wendell Scott Pioneer Award in 2004 for leadership in advancing people of color in the motor sports industry, the Diversity Leadership Award at the 2003 Literacy Classic, the Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award from Tufts University in 2000.
  
  
• Received the Hero Among Us Award from the Boston Celtics in 1999 and was named as the Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Cesar Chavez Fellow by the State of Michigan in 1998.
  
  
• Winner of the Arthur Ashe Voice of Conscience Award, Womens Sports Foundation Presidents Award for work toward the development of women's sports and named as the Boston Celtics Man of the Year, all in 1997.
  
  
• Received the first Distinguished American in Service of Our Children award from the National Association of Elementary School Principals in 1995.
  
  
• Recipient of eight honorary degrees, and in 1993 was named outstanding alumnus at the University of Denver where he got his Ph.D. in international race relations in 1973. Lapchick received a B.A. from St. Johns University in 1967 and an honorary degree from St. Johns in 2001.

For more information about the Lapchicks scheduled presentations at NSU, call 918-444-2885.

9/8/2009

Published: 2009-09-08 00:00:00