SUPERIOR, Wis. - On the last day of March, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), governing body of collegiate athletics, announced its Division III diversity grant recipients, and the University of Wisconsin-Superior will be one of the institutions receiving funding toward a position in 2023.

The Division III diversity grants provide grant funding to members committed to enhancing ethnic minority and gender representation in athletics administration and assistant coaching positions.

UW-Superior is one of the recipients of the NCAA's Ethnic Minorities and Women in Sports grant. Following a national search, the successful candidate will take a position with Yellowjacket Athletics working in the communications department with a focus on sports information, while also assisting in the department's digital marketing, creative content and branding efforts.

This is the second time UW-Superior has received the Ethnic Minorities and Women in Sports grant. The institution first received the grant in 2020 and hired Nicole Wishard, who turned her experience in one year at UW-Superior into a full-time position at the University of Mississippi. Following Wishard's departure, Christine Bjornstal was hired, and after one year with Yellowjacket Athletics she accepted a full-time position at Luther College.

"As a department, we are very grateful to the NCAA and the selection committee for once again choosing UW-Superior as one of its recipients of the Ethnic Minorities and Women in Sports grant. We are excited to be able to secure this grant and hire a position that will benefit every sport and every student-athlete at UW-Superior," said director of athletic communications Jon Garver. "The first time we received the grant we utilized it to intentionally focus on strengthening our digital content creation and marketing, and that effort was successful. Now, coupled with a the hiring of another sports information specialist, we are going to be able to grow our department and intentionally target our sports information duties and strategically improve our communications efforts across the board."

In addition to sports information work, the position will have administrative elements where the candidate will assist the director of athletics with budget management, fiscal operations and other duties.

"The successful candidate will be given all the tools needed to build themselves into a very well-rounded athletics communication professional," Garver said. "We were fortunate to be able to help our previous grant hires develop themselves to the point where they parlayed their experience into full-time employment in college athletics, and we don't see any reason why that won't ring true with the candidate we hire for this position."

The full position description can be found here.