Human rights activist, pioneer for racial equality, internationally recognized expert on sports issues, scholar and author Richard E. Lapchick is often described as "the racial conscience of sport." He brought his commitment to equality and his belief that sport can be an effective instrument of positive social change to the University of Central Florida where he accepted an endowed chair in August 2001. Lapchick became the only person named as "One of the 100 Most Powerful People in Sport" to head up a sport management program.

He remains President and CEO of the National Consortium for Academics and Sport and helped bring the NCAS national office to 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 following with Lapchick's 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 UCF's strong business curriculum. The DeVos Program has been named one of the nation's top five programs by the Wall Street Journal, the Sports Business Journal and ESPN The Magazine.

In December of 2006, Lapchick, his wife and daughter and a group of DeVos students formed the Hope for Stanley Foundation which is organizing groups of student-athletes and sports management students to go to New Orleans to work in the reconstruction efforts in the devastated Ninth Ward. As of the summer of 2007, Hope for Stanley members have spent five weeks in the city in a partnership with the NOLA City Council.

Lapchick 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 Center's Project TEAMWORK was called "America's most successful violence prevention program" by public opinion analyst Lou Harris. It won the Peter F. Drucker Foundation Award as the nation's

most innovative non-profit program and was named by the Clinton Administration as a model for violence prevention. The Center's 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.

The Center helped form the National Consortium for Academics and Sports (NCAS), a group of over 215 colleges and universities that have adopted the Center's programs. To date, more than 27,430 athletes have returned to NCAS member schools. Over 12,200 have graduated. Nationally, the NCAS athletes have worked with more than 15.3 million students in the school outreach program, which focuses on teaching youth how to improve race relations, develop conflict resolution skills, prevent gender violence and avoid drug and alcohol abuse. They have collectively donated more than 16.6 million hours of service.

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