Virginia Faculty Athletics Representative Carolyn Callahan knows about working with gifted students. After all, she holds a doctorate in educational psychology with an emphasis in gifted education and is the longtime director of the University of Virginia National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented.

She also knows about working with talented athletes as a veteran FAR for the Cavaliers athletics department.

Now, as chair of the newly established Division I Academic Cabinet, Callahan will be working on behalf of thousands of academically and athletically gifted NCAA student-athletes.

The Academic Cabinet is tasked with overseeing all academic matters, except those addressed by the Committee on Academic Performance. It also reports to the Division I Leadership Council on policy issues and the Division I Legislative Council on legislative items. Governance groups that report to the cabinet include those that deal with foreign student records, high school reviews, student-records reviews, and initial-eligibility and progress-toward-degree waivers.

At the cabinet’s inaugural meeting September 8-9 in Indianapolis, Callahan wants to formulate legislation and strategies that advance the notion of setting high academic standards for student-athletes along with establishing support mechanisms that allow them to achieve at the highest level.

“My goal is that we become recognized as a group that sets high standards but also looks for ways to enhance a student’s ability to achieve those high standards,” she said.

Among the challenges immediately facing the cabinet, said Callahan, is maintaining the student-athlete balance.

“The pressure from people outside the arena on student-athletes to win or be No. 1 often makes it very difficult for them to be true students,” said Callahan. “It’s not clear what the student-athlete should be. We keep defining it and redefining it, but I don’t think we’ve come to grips with that, which makes this cabinet’s job quite difficult.”

Callahan was not a collegiate athlete herself, though she played basketball in high school and worked as a sports reporter for the school paper, which sparked her interest in athletics. Also, as the oldest daughter in an all-female family with a father who was an accomplished athlete, she said that to relate to Dad, she and her sisters became interested in sports.

Throughout school, Callahan was on track to becoming a math teacher until her first teaching job exposed her to working with gifted and talented students. The rest, as the saying goes, is history. That history, though, includes a succession of appointments to athletics-related committees and boards at the university level and within the NCAA that has acquainted her with the issues and concerns surrounding student-athletes’ athletics and academic obligations.

Formerly a member of the Progress-Toward-Degree Committee, Callahan served on Virginia’s athletics advisory committee and worked with the athletics department on various committees and activities until being appointed faculty athletics representative.

All of those experiences, she said, in addition to just interacting with student-athletes, have prepared her for the Academic Cabinet’s top post. Callahan has an uncompromised commitment to making sure student-athletes are student-athletes and to ensuring that student-athletes are treated fairly and receive the support they need to be the kinds of students they want to be. Beyond that, she wants to personalize the cabinet’s work.

“For me, it’s important that we personalize the student-athlete, that we don’t think of them as a group, but remember that they are individuals,” she said.