Urban Youth Sports
Co-Director
A Fond Farewell
-- Art Taylor resigns as Co-Director of Urban Youth Sports
It is with considerable sadness that I make this announcement.
More than 13 years ago, a man called me from Minnesota saying that he wanted to come to work at the Center during his sabbatical from the public school system. We were understaffed and young and I welcomed Art Taylor with open arms.
When I met with Art late in January, he told me that he had decided to resign from the Center because of the stress related to his position with Urban Youth Sport coupled with his desire to spend more time with his family. Like many of us, I have been concerned about Art's health for many years. Having been friends with Art, Ann Louise and their children, I know how important his family is to him. On both health and family counts, I am happy for Art.
After we discussed his resignation, I asked two favors of Art. First, I requested that he stay full-time until February 28, 2001 so he could work with Allyce Najimy as she took over from Jose Masso as our new COO.
Art has been helping her in a transition in which Kevin Fitzgerald is becoming Director of Urban Youth Sport. Steve Burke and Linda Keefe will continue to manage their respective programs under Kevin's direction.
The second thing I asked Art was to be available to me and Allyce as a consultant for six months on vision, strategic planning and development efforts. While working from his home office and at the Center, Art has agreed to continue to help us in all three areas and I am grateful hat he has agreed to make this sacrifice for the good of the Center.
There are many people on our staff unfamiliar with Art's history with us. I want to fill in the blanks for you.
The NCAA's Certification Program was started and modeled on our College Student-Athlete Project. Art helped write the grant and was a team leader as we worked on 25 college campuses over three years.
After Mayor Flynn called me about sending athletes into the community to work on race relations with children giving us the seed of the idea for Project TEAMWORK, I turned to Art and (now NCAS Associate Director) Keith Lee to help conceptualize the program.
Art came to me in the early 1990's about a program on gender violence prevention. The Center was ready for this program and MVP was born. Art and Jackson Katz wrote the successful FIPSE grant proposal and Art was the first MVP director.
Athletes in Service to America began after Eli Segal came to me and asked what we could do with $1 million a year from AmeriCorps. I told him we could marry Project TEAMWORK and MVP.
Urban Youth Sport, with all its potential, was yet another offspring of Art's ability to be a visionary. Thus you can readily see that, even if he has not recently been directly involved with all of the Center's programs,
Art will leave here with a legacy of imprinting all of our best work. Art will always have a spiritual presence with us.
I hope you will all join me in first, thanking him for all he has given to us and, second, in wishing him and his family great things in the years ahead.
Northeastern
University's
CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF SPORT IN SOCIETY
360 Huntington Avenue, Suite 161 CP
Boston, MA 02115-5000
Phone: (617) 373-4025
Fax:
(617) 373-4566