Ruth Darling was in the right position to make the call when she urged academic personnel and coaches at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, to develop an academic best-practices document last fall. That's because the university moved the academic-support programs for student-athletes to the academic-affairs side of the campus four years ago.

Darling, the assistant vice-chancellor for academic affairs at Tennessee, said the move has placed the university's Thornton Athletics Student Life Center programs and staff, for which she has direct oversight, within the academic community and has focused academic initiatives to align with the overall teaching/learning goals for undergraduates at the institution.

She said meetings with coaches during which best-practices guidelines were reviewed might have been different if she had been an employee reporting to the athletics director and, by extension, to the coaches.

"It is important to come to the table with all interests and perspectives equally represented," Darling said. "We all feel the pressure to win at some level, either in a specific sport or in the classroom. We must focus on strategies to win, but to win with the student-athletes' learning and development as the guiding principle for action."

Darling said the pressure for excellence should fall on all parties equally -- academics, coaches, athletics administrators and student-athletes.

"The focus that we (academics) need to have is to continue to provide the academic and life skills services and support programs that our student-athletes need to be successful at the institution," she said. "We also must communicate with the coaches when assistance is needed to motivate students, to support our efforts and to implement consequences that have meaning for an individual student- athlete who might not be demonstrating good student behaviors."

Darling said moving student-athlete academic-support programs to academic affairs centered those efforts within the reporting structure, programs and academic governance of the institution.

"That in turn supports what we understand to be the underlying purpose and focus of the APR, which is to bring student-athletes in line academically with other students who are attending the university to obtain their undergraduate degrees."

-- Gary T. Brown