One year after the U’s athletic department began implementing new programs to better monitor student-athletes’ academic progress, the U’s athletes are among the best students in the nation, according to a report from the U’s Athletics Advisory Council.
In 2004, the NCAA began surveying student-athletes’ Academic Progress Rate to create a benchmark for success and a bottom line for punishing poor scholastic performance.
In 2007, every U athletic team surpassed the NCAA benchmark APR of 9258212;a feat that 56 percent of Division I schools failed to accomplish. APR is calculated by measuring a student-athlete’s performance based on performance eligibility and retention from semester to semester.
U Associate Athletics Director for Student Support Services Mary Bowman said the biggest challenge the U’s nearly 400 student-athletes face is balancing rigorous team schedules with schoolwork.
“I hear it every year when I conduct exit interviews with our student-athletes,” Bowman said. “Time is the major issue on several levels8212;they don’t have time to be part of the campus community, which makes it hard to be successful. Most of our athletes are involved in team activities year-round. They don’t get many breaks.”
Bowman said skyrocketing coaching salaries have led to unprecedented competition among college coaches, which often results in repeated head coaching changes. This makes graduation and retention rates harder to monitor. Student athletes often become attached to the coaches who recruited them, and when coaches go elsewhere, athletes are tempted to follow suit.
In the past six years, 74 percent of student-athletes have received bachelor’s degrees from the U, which Bowman said might be related to the U’s coaching shuffle in men’s basketball and football. Bowman said 80 percent of student-athletes who stay enrolled at the U after their NCAA eligibility is up receive degrees.
In August 2007, the U implemented an attendance monitoring program for student-athletes. The athletics department employs about 20 monitors who check the daily classroom attendance of 108 student-athletes with GPAs below 2.5 and give weekly reports to coaches.
JoAnn Hulbert-Eagan, director of athletic academic services, said several large schools nationwide have similar monitoring programs.
“Unfortunately we haven’t seen the jump in GPAs we hoped for, but the program is still in an experimental stage,” Hulbert-Eagan said. “We’re open to changes.”
Zane Beadles, a junior offensive lineman on the football team, said the athletic department’s services, such as tutoring and advising, have helped him stop procrastinating.
“They’ve worked really well with me,” Beadles said. “The hardest part about being a student-athlete is fitting everything in, especially when you study mechanical engineering. We usually start weight lifting at 6:45 in the morning, have classes from 8 to noon, then have meetings and practice all afternoon, and then we go home and study. It’s a pretty grueling schedule.”