Marie Stroman, a former volleyball student-athlete at Macalester, has faced her share of challenges throughout her collegiate athletics career. She began her career in athletics administration a decade ago as an intern with the Middle Atlantic Conference and took on her biggest challenge to date this fall when she was named commissioner of the Colonial States Athletic Conference in Pennsylvania.
At Macalester, Stroman was able to balance athletics and other extracurricular endeavors. Her coaches even encouraged her to study abroad, and she took the opportunity her junior year.
"When I went to Denmark for six months, everyone was really happy for me."She said Macalester "really fostered and welcomed people who applied themselves in a well-rounded manner."
Stroman's well-rounded student-athlete experience included extensive advocacy with the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, a student-athlete-led organization at each NCAA member school that advocates for student-athletes at the campus, conference and national levels. After beginning on her campus, Stroman eventually chaired Division III national SAAC from 2008-11 and helped implement a partnership with the Special Olympics that continues today.
"Serving on the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, that was a really transformational experience for me as well," she said. "In terms of advocacy for not only myself but also my peers and understanding that people cared about our experience and people cared about student-athletes."
Stroman's focus on advocacy and equity in college athletics has familial roots. Her mother had been a volleyball student-athlete at Minnesota who benefited from the adoption of Title IX and later became an adaptive physical education teacher who worked with students with special needs.
It is this deep-rooted passion for people Stroman carries in her professional and personal lives. Describing the influence of her mother's work, she said, "I saw it as normal. She did work with Special Olympics and in terms of inclusion as a core value for myself, that was something I saw modeled from her work with different people in the community. I have a little bit more self-awareness of all the things that she's done for me, especially now that I have children."
The importance of SAAC is something Stroman has long advocated as an athletics administrator. She encourages her student-athletes to attend the annual NCAA Convention, where legislative proposals are considered. As a SAAC advisor, she has observed the growth in student-athletes she has counseled, adding, "Seeing them develop from a shy student-athlete that is scared to share their own experience to someone who's comfortable speaking for their peers and really standing up to say, 'Mental health is important.' We should talk about this, or we should allocate conference resources to this.'"
Much of Stroman's work focuses on ensuring member schools can support and effectively sponsor programs throughout the season and at conference championships.
"You have this structure in place so that the schools can develop programs if they need to," she said. "So if they're considering adding men's lacrosse or women's lacrosse as a sport, they know that there's a structure in place at the conference level to compete and have a positive experience."
Nonetheless, Stroman is not able to make decisions for her member schools or unilaterally create a policy. She noted, "From a conference commissioner standpoint, I don't make a lot of decisions or have a lot of power as much as some people would think. I'm more so protecting and enforcing what my membership wants."
For Stroman, affecting the student-athlete experience from a conference office is about personal values and is a job she takes seriously. Part of her work is asking tough questions of member schools. "I think it's vitally important for me to be the voice in the room to say, 'We need to look at this. Is this fair? Is this equitable? Is this what we stand for?' Challenging questions lead to productive dialogue that shapes the future of college athletics," she added. "I can be the voice in the room to say these things matter and let's talk about them. Let's talk about them with your peers."
Stroman thinks that providing for the needs of student-athletes can positively affect their self-worth, noting, "Student-athletes want to feel seen, and they want to feel heard. They want to feel valued. There's not just one way to do that for all student-athletes."
A key support in Stroman's life has been her husband, Logan, the women's cross country and track and field head coach at Widener. With both working in college athletics, they often work together to ensure the other's success. While she is conscious of her husband's recruiting and meet schedules, Stroman noted, "He also gets when I'm hosting a Zoom meeting in our living room for 10 college presidents. He's like, 'OK, yeah, the kids need to be downstairs. They need to be quiet because she's leading a very important meeting.' So I think having that person has been so huge for me that just kind of gets it."
Stroman realizes that as a conference commissioner, she faces a set of challenges that are different from coaches or university staff.
"There aren't too many people that share the experiences that you do. I could always reach out to an AD or another administrator, but it's just a different set of experiences," she said.
Instead, Stroman tries to stay connected with people and activities that keep her and her family grounded, saying, "Unfortunately, almost all our family is about 1,000 miles away in Minnesota, but technology has been good to us. We FaceTime with my mom every day. My kids get to see their grandparents a lot."
As her career has taken shape, Stroman has depended on leadership opportunities and NCAA resources to foster growth and development. When she was an intern, an NCAA Division III Strategic Alliance Matching Grant helped her secure her first full-time role with the Middle Atlantic Conference. She also took part in the Women Leaders in College Sports program.
This year, she is a participant in the NCAA Pathways Program, a highly competitive national program that equips promising athletic administrators with administrative and interpersonal skills before they take the next step in their careers. She noted, "I am so grateful to the NCAA for all those opportunities. They do a really great job of connecting you with others that you may not have connected with in the past, or you may not have connected with on your own."
Stroman acknowledged that making the most of her opportunity to lead a conference required preparation and foresight. "I have a million things going on, and I could easily say I'm not ready for that change. But I feel like as long as you have the balance and you have the support that you need to make a change, you can take that step."