Five years ago when the Division I Board of Directors approved an ambitious reform structure that introduced a real-time measure of team academic performance, members wondered if the nomenclature of academic reform would take hold.

A well-attended session on Academic Progress Rate improvement plans January 11 at the NCAA Convention in Nashville invalidated those concerns. Panelists presented – and the hundreds of attendees took notes on – everything from spreadsheets to academic game plans as examples of tracking, monitoring and ultimately ensuring student-athlete academic success.

Clearly, APR has replaced RPI as Division I’s most important acronym.

Panelists included Colorado Faculty Athletics Representative David Clough, who featured an Excel spreadsheet for managing APR that is now available on the NCAA Web site, and Middle Tennessee State Athletics Director Chris Massaro, who told the crowd that when he was hired in spring 2005 amid a culture of declining scores, school President Sidney McPhee stared down the barrel of his glasses and said, “If hired, you will improve our APR, correct?”

Clough, Massaro and Conference USA Assistant Commissioner Rob Philippi shared strategies to do just that, including Clough's display of an interactive Excel spreadsheet that tracked the APR points of each student-athlete on a team and could predict future scores for a team based on past performance.

Massaro stressed a team-based approach that also included accountability for student-athletes with specific consequences for various academic infractions, ranging from a meeting with the athletics director to suspension from athletics competition.

Philippi described the role of the conference office as a sort of communications hub for information about various strategies and solutions for increasing academic performance and graduation success. He said conferences can serve as a center for information about all teams in the conference and help to disseminate best practices to all their institutions.

The panelists encouraged attendees to take advantage of the NCAA staff support that is in place, including guidelines for building improvement plans that are available at www.NCAA.org and personal staff assistance.

Materials from the session, including Clough's interactive spreadsheet, will be available at the NCAA Web site in mid-January.