National Collegiate Athletic Association
NCAA News Archive - 2007
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Reform gets educational booster shot
APR becomes part of athletics culture
APR becomes part of athletics culture
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By Michelle Brutlag Hosick
The NCAA News
The NCAA News
As academic reform enters a critical year, administrators at dozens of institutions are taking advantage of educational opportunities to understand and improve their teams’ Academic Progress Rates.
In the last few months, the NCAA has partnered with the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) and the National Association of Academic Advisors for Athletics (N4A) on several educational initiatives and sponsored one-day workshops on the Academic Performance Program at the NCAA Regional Rules Seminars. The organizations are focused on changes that will eliminate the squad-size adjustment and implement historically based penalties with serious ramifications for academic under-performance.
More than 1,000 participation opportunities were available nationwide.
At the Regional Rules Seminars in Miami and Denver, 735 people attended the “mini-seminars” designed for compliance coordinators, athletics eligibility coordinators, academic support administrators and faculty representatives. NCAA staff outlined topics such as APR basics, immediate and historically based penalties, data collection, APR improvement plans and penalty waivers.
Earlier this year, the NCAA collaborated with NACADA to offer both a six-week online course and a two-and-a-half day summer institute in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
The online course, offered in conjunction with Kansas State University, educated participants not only on the APP and NCAA academic standards, but also on academic advising for student-athletes, the role of athletics at an institution and special circumstances student-athletes often face.
About 150 people participated in the first course and 425 more are on a waiting list for the next. The course is designed for a variety of audiences: people who might not work directly with student-athletes every day but would benefit from exposure to the basics of NCAA academic reform and people who are new to their roles assisting student-athletes and need a primer.
The summer institute was meant for teams of staff members from a cross section of campus units, including athletics, academics, admissions, student affairs and others — 94 people representing 26 institutions took part in the seminar. The institute was an intensive workshop that included small-group discussions and focused on building partnerships across campus to improve student-athlete academic success.
Roberta Flaherty, executive director of NACADA, said student-athletes are a part of her group’s mission — they strive to develop all students within the higher-education system. The curriculum for the course and the institute, she said, was developed based on recommendations from the Academic Reform Curriculum Advisory Board, and the group already plans to offer both initiatives again.
“We hope to develop some ideas on how to expand it. For the online course, we hope because it’s directed at all people on campus that it will help those not directly related to athletics to better understand the student-athlete and the NCAA requirements for those athletes,” she said. “At the same time, we want to help the ones that are heavily involved with athletics understand the basic academic advising theories and learn more methods for helping students.”
The NCAA also worked with N4A on a pilot workshop entitled “Winning Strategies for Academic Performance and Retention: A Seminar for Intercollegiate Athletics Professionals.” The seminar was conducted in conjunction with the N4A national convention and was designed for campus academic support administrators. In addition to some of the same information covered in the other offerings, the workshop also offered a panel of experts and a role-playing exercise to demonstrate the collaborative development of APR improvement plans.
Jean Boyd, associate athletics director at Arizona State University, was among the 110 participants in the N4A workshop. Boyd, who also participated in several of the other initiatives, said the role-playing exercise was valuable because it showed him and the other participants the vastly different approaches to the same situation.
“It showed that even in a group of like-minded people — we were all in academics — there were wide-ranging beliefs about how you should address the APR program,” he said. “You really have to take the time to get the stakeholders on the same page and make sure everyone has the same goals and the same commitment to achieving those goals.”
The opportunities are not designed simply to educate people at institutions with teams that fall below the APR benchmarks for immediate or historically based penalties. The programs offer information and support to anyone who is interested in knowing more about the Academic Performance Program. Boyd said it is a misperception to think that the programs target only those programs that are struggling academically.
“Everyone can gain from the collaborative dialogue,” said Boyd, who participated in several of the educational offerings. “It’s a great support group and a great network to get ideas and insights on how to improve your system at your institution. The goal is obviously not only to graduate your student-athletes and provide them with a meaningful experience, but also to do well in this new metric.”
Flaherty said she hopes the educational opportunities offered through the collaboration with the NCAA will continue and will make the information more available to people who help student-athletes succeed on campus.
“It’s a great initiative and the (NACADA Academic Reform Summer) institute in particular brought some of the administrators from across campus into focus on the values of good academic advising within the athletics area and made the folks (not in athletics) aware of the uniqueness of the student-athlete,” she said.
For his part, Boyd said he was glad the NCAA, N4A and NACADA joined forces to help educate and inform people at various positions within the NCAA membership.
“It shows great synergy that those organizations are working together to make sure we have all the information we need in fulfilling our mission — graduating students and helping them perform well academically,” he said.
The collaboration will continue, with an eye toward helping people understand the complexities of academic reform and how everyone on campus can work together to give students the best chance to succeed.
Phil Moses, a board member for N4A and director of the academic support program at North Carolina State University, said institutions are at a point in the evolution of academic reform at which it’s becoming clear who is doing well and who needs assistance.
“Now we are discussing how to provide the assistance, how to make people aware of and understand all the components of the APR,” Moses said.
Among options on the table for the future is a consulting and advising program at which N4A members would prepare and share presentations on campuses about understanding the APR, evaluating data and doing self-assessments. Moses said some of the consulting may have been happening “in pockets” throughout the membership, but that a more formal program is forthcoming.
In the last few months, the NCAA has partnered with the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) and the National Association of Academic Advisors for Athletics (N4A) on several educational initiatives and sponsored one-day workshops on the Academic Performance Program at the NCAA Regional Rules Seminars. The organizations are focused on changes that will eliminate the squad-size adjustment and implement historically based penalties with serious ramifications for academic under-performance.
More than 1,000 participation opportunities were available nationwide.
At the Regional Rules Seminars in Miami and Denver, 735 people attended the “mini-seminars” designed for compliance coordinators, athletics eligibility coordinators, academic support administrators and faculty representatives. NCAA staff outlined topics such as APR basics, immediate and historically based penalties, data collection, APR improvement plans and penalty waivers.
Earlier this year, the NCAA collaborated with NACADA to offer both a six-week online course and a two-and-a-half day summer institute in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
The online course, offered in conjunction with Kansas State University, educated participants not only on the APP and NCAA academic standards, but also on academic advising for student-athletes, the role of athletics at an institution and special circumstances student-athletes often face.
About 150 people participated in the first course and 425 more are on a waiting list for the next. The course is designed for a variety of audiences: people who might not work directly with student-athletes every day but would benefit from exposure to the basics of NCAA academic reform and people who are new to their roles assisting student-athletes and need a primer.
The summer institute was meant for teams of staff members from a cross section of campus units, including athletics, academics, admissions, student affairs and others — 94 people representing 26 institutions took part in the seminar. The institute was an intensive workshop that included small-group discussions and focused on building partnerships across campus to improve student-athlete academic success.
Roberta Flaherty, executive director of NACADA, said student-athletes are a part of her group’s mission — they strive to develop all students within the higher-education system. The curriculum for the course and the institute, she said, was developed based on recommendations from the Academic Reform Curriculum Advisory Board, and the group already plans to offer both initiatives again.“We hope to develop some ideas on how to expand it. For the online course, we hope because it’s directed at all people on campus that it will help those not directly related to athletics to better understand the student-athlete and the NCAA requirements for those athletes,” she said. “At the same time, we want to help the ones that are heavily involved with athletics understand the basic academic advising theories and learn more methods for helping students.”
The NCAA also worked with N4A on a pilot workshop entitled “Winning Strategies for Academic Performance and Retention: A Seminar for Intercollegiate Athletics Professionals.” The seminar was conducted in conjunction with the N4A national convention and was designed for campus academic support administrators. In addition to some of the same information covered in the other offerings, the workshop also offered a panel of experts and a role-playing exercise to demonstrate the collaborative development of APR improvement plans.
Jean Boyd, associate athletics director at Arizona State University, was among the 110 participants in the N4A workshop. Boyd, who also participated in several of the other initiatives, said the role-playing exercise was valuable because it showed him and the other participants the vastly different approaches to the same situation.
“It showed that even in a group of like-minded people — we were all in academics — there were wide-ranging beliefs about how you should address the APR program,” he said. “You really have to take the time to get the stakeholders on the same page and make sure everyone has the same goals and the same commitment to achieving those goals.”
The opportunities are not designed simply to educate people at institutions with teams that fall below the APR benchmarks for immediate or historically based penalties. The programs offer information and support to anyone who is interested in knowing more about the Academic Performance Program. Boyd said it is a misperception to think that the programs target only those programs that are struggling academically.
“Everyone can gain from the collaborative dialogue,” said Boyd, who participated in several of the educational offerings. “It’s a great support group and a great network to get ideas and insights on how to improve your system at your institution. The goal is obviously not only to graduate your student-athletes and provide them with a meaningful experience, but also to do well in this new metric.”
Flaherty said she hopes the educational opportunities offered through the collaboration with the NCAA will continue and will make the information more available to people who help student-athletes succeed on campus.
“It’s a great initiative and the (NACADA Academic Reform Summer) institute in particular brought some of the administrators from across campus into focus on the values of good academic advising within the athletics area and made the folks (not in athletics) aware of the uniqueness of the student-athlete,” she said.
For his part, Boyd said he was glad the NCAA, N4A and NACADA joined forces to help educate and inform people at various positions within the NCAA membership.
“It shows great synergy that those organizations are working together to make sure we have all the information we need in fulfilling our mission — graduating students and helping them perform well academically,” he said.
The collaboration will continue, with an eye toward helping people understand the complexities of academic reform and how everyone on campus can work together to give students the best chance to succeed.
Phil Moses, a board member for N4A and director of the academic support program at North Carolina State University, said institutions are at a point in the evolution of academic reform at which it’s becoming clear who is doing well and who needs assistance.
“Now we are discussing how to provide the assistance, how to make people aware of and understand all the components of the APR,” Moses said.
Among options on the table for the future is a consulting and advising program at which N4A members would prepare and share presentations on campuses about understanding the APR, evaluating data and doing self-assessments. Moses said some of the consulting may have been happening “in pockets” throughout the membership, but that a more formal program is forthcoming.
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