University of Hartford President Walter Harrison was asked two weeks before the NCAA released its first set of Academic Progress Rate (APR) data what he would do if any Hartford teams were identified as being under the 925 cut score for contemporaneous penalties. He said, "I would meet with my athletics director to discuss why that team was under-performing and then ask for a plan to turn it around."

Harrison, who is in the spotlight in this issue as chair of the Division I Committee on Academic Performance (CAP), made good on his word in late February when two of his school's teams didn't make the NCAA's first academic grade.

"I'm reminded of the hair club commercial in which the guy says he's not only president of the company but a member of the club. Well, I'm not only the chair of the CAP but I'm also a president of a Division I member institution. We had two teams identified as being under the APR cut score. I asked the athletics director to meet; we went through the report; I asked why those teams were having difficulties and asked for a plan to turn it around," Harrison said. "I would urge my presidential colleagues to take a similar approach."

Indeed, now that the APR data have been released, and now that schools have had time to understand how the APR works and what it is designed to do, institutional personnel are starting to activate the next step, which is preparing for, and implementing, change.

"This represents the implementation of the most far-reaching academic reform in decades," NCAA President Myles Brand said February 28 when the APR data were made public. "It is the result of long and hard work by presidential leadership. The standards are tough, but fair, and they are complex. But the message is clear: Recruit student-athletes who are capable of doing college-level work; help them meet progress-to ward-degree standards and keep them enrolled until they graduate, which is the ultimate outcome.

"Presidents should take this as a serious warning to ensure that student-athletes have every opportunity to take advantage of all the educational resources the university has to offer. This is a management tool for presidents to use to improve performance."

Many presidents and university academic personnel saw this coming and have taken active steps to prepare for the APR, while others are in a catch-up mode. Regardless, the message is sinking in.

"We now have our wins, our losses and our APR," said Ruth Darling, assistant vice-chancellor for academic affairs and director of the Thornton Athletics Student Life Center at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. "This in effect has added another column that is very visible. The APR will be posted each term, just like the wins and losses are posted at the end of each season of competition."

Darling, a member of the Division I Academics/Eligibility/Compliance Cabinet, said she and Todd Diacon, Tennessee's faculty athletics representative, warned her staff and coaches at Tennessee this fall that there was a "perfect storm" brewing called academic reform. With enhanced initial-eligibility and progress-toward-degree standards in full swing and the APR on the way -- along with increased rigor in the university's own academic requirements -- Darling urged academic personnel and the athletics department staff to collaborate on an action plan to keep the ship aright.

The result was an academic best-practices document that would serve as a discussion centerpiece for meetings with coaches, academic counselors and athletics administrators. The document was an agreed-upon set of guidelines that outlined responsibilities for each party, including student-athletes.

"One of the more effective initiatives an institution can pursue is to assess what specifically are the academic best practices for student-athlete academic-support programs on a particular campus," Darling said. "We need to make that assessment within the institutional context of mission, goals and resources available for student-athletes and then partner with other academic and student-affairs units that provide services and programs for the general student population."

With such an agreement in place, Darling said, it's easier to bring together those with the responsibility and those being held accountable for student-athlete academic performance. If the APR is the accountability measure for teams, Darling said the best-practices document is the reciprocal device for various individuals involved in student-athlete academic success.

"The best-practices document sets the context, and it also serves as a reference when there are points of confusion or questions concerning actions and direction. This process supports what the APR is all about, which is being totally accountable to the student-athlete's academic progress and completion of the undergraduate degree," Darling said. "We need to focus on this effort as a team."

Freshmen, transfer cohorts

Steve McDonnell, the associate director of athletics for academic affairs at Texas A&M University, College Station, said the APR indeed has brought like academic minds to the table to sharpen focus on all student-athletes' performance in the classroom.

"The APR has enabled us to have some good dialogue," he said. "Part of this is an educational process to make sure everyone understands what is going on, and part is coming up with realistic steps -- in many cases institutional-specific steps -- to address issues."

McDonnell, who also is the current president of the National Association of Academic Advisors for Athletics (N4A), said those discussions are happening on campuses around the country, not just at Texas A&M. He said many schools are focusing on two groups that significantly affect the APR -- the incoming freshmen (making sure they're a "good fit" with the institutional mission) and student-athletes who have indicated a desire to transfer.

For the latter group, McDonnell emphasized the need for adequate communication among coaches and staffs to make sure they're doing everything within their power for that student to leave the institution in good academic standing.

"We already do a lot of that, so this isn't an entirely new concept," McDonnell said. "But what's different is that historically, when it's known that someone is leaving, there may be a tendency for some schools not to worry about that athlete's academic progress because he's leaving. That's a very general statement, and it's not like every single case happens that way. But sometimes schools don't put as much of an emphasis on working with a student who has made it known that he or she is transferring.

"People in academic support will tell you they will try to work with every student-athlete no matter what. But in terms of priorities, we might want to take a look at these cases more closely now."

Schools now have the extra incentive of maintaining a potential transfer's eligibility, because if they don't, then the transfer becomes the dreaded "0-for-2" student-athlete who may subject the team to contemporaneous penalties under the APR structure.

Similarly, the APR encourages institutions to retain academic casualties to bring them back to academic health. Because the APR awards points both for eligibility and retention, institutions are obliged to do whatever they can to foster each. If they do, the likelihood of graduation is that much greater.

"I also think there will be some good dialogue on campuses about looking at the profile of students we bring in and making sure we have a good fit," McDonnell said. "Again, not to say that isn't something we've been doing all along, but many schools will be examining that even more closely now."

Seton Hall University Faculty Athletics Representative George Browne agreed that schools ought to be looking hard at the way they recruit to ensure the fit between prospects and the academic expectations of the institution.

"We all say we don't bring students on campus we don't believe can graduate. The APR will tell us whether that's true," he said. "Those institutions that are having APR difficulty need to look at recruiting in those terms."

NCAA President Brand said that doesn't mean institutions have to overhaul their admissions policies in every case. "There's room in the system to take risks," he said, "but only if you provide academic support for those prospects. It's not so much who you admit, but how much you are committed to those student-athletes' academic performance while they are enrolled."

That's a significant point, according to Hartford President Harrison, who said a change in institutional behavior is the ultimate goal of the APR, not simply to dole out penalties.

"Contemporaneous penalties are meant to send a signal to presidents, athletics directors and coaches to change what they're doing so that the programs can improve academic performance," he said. "The penalties are tough, but fair. I urge presidents to use this year's warnings as a management tool to correct behavior."

For institutional personnel such as Darling at Tennessee and McDonnell at Texas A&M, that management tool has prompted more institutional-specific management tools to not only deal with the APR, but to focus on the broader educational mission of ensuring student-athlete academic progress.

Institutions may get help in that regard later this spring when Harrison's CAP meets to develop broad guidelines for an "academic recovery plan" schools can use to manage the APR. While such policies may not apply evenly to all schools across the board, they will provide another resource for institutions as they work to comply with the new standards.

"To me, the whole reform process has been a wake-up call in terms of, OK, here are the issues, here are the facts we're dealing with, so let's develop a strategy in conjunction with our coaches and administrators to resolve any problems," McDonnell said. "We're definitely doing this at A&M, and having just returned from an N4A regional conference, I can tell you that similar dialogue is occurring at a number of campuses."

APR misperceptions

Some common misunderstandings about how the Academic Progress Rate affects institutions:

• Teams are penalized unfairly when student-athletes leave the institution because of circumstances beyond the institution's control. APR data indicate that as long as student-athletes maintain their academic eligibility, an unusually high number would have to leave the institution for that team's APR to subject the team to contemporaneous penalty. Also, even if teams are below the 925 APR (with the squad-size adjustment applied), contemporaneous penalties are not assessed unless the team has an 0-for-2 player.

• Institutions will have to think twice about disciplinary action against student-athletes who violate team rules or commit a crime, since their teams will lose retention points in the APR. Perfection is not the expectation, or the point, of the APR. It is not reasonable to expect institutions to plan for or prevent unfortunate circumstances; however, it also should not be assumed that the APR could be "blamed" for an institution not properly addressing a disciplinary situation. Institutions must be cautious in the recruiting process to select student-athletes who are a good fit for their campus. Recruiting student-athletes who have known character risks is as dangerous as recruiting student-athletes who have known academic risks.

• Because of the weight on retention, the APR discourages institutions from releasing student-athletes who want to transfer. The APR is intended to discourage so-called "run-offs," or encouraging a student-athlete to transfer because he or she is not performing at the level the coach expected, but again, as long as transfers leave in good academic standing, a team's APR should remain above the contemporaneous-penalty cut. Some loss of retention points is to be expected from all teams, but those situations do not automatically jeopardize the team's APR.

• Teams in subsequent years after posting a poor APR are unfairly penalized because it takes too long to recover. Once the four-year rolling average APR begins, only about 25 percent of the data will change each year. The next few years are critical for under-performing teams to show marked improvement, not only because of the obvious need to build the four-year APR, but also, a steady increase over time can be used in an appeal for a waiver if necessary.