Faculty Senate Agenda

April 17, 2007

Attachment 5.

UNIVERSITY ATHLETICES COMMITTEE REPORT

Report on ECU and Intercollegiate Athletics

The University Athletics Committee reports to the Faculty Senate regarding recommendations concerning academic policies that impact the academic integrity of the athletic programs.

The UAC is a combination F.S./Administration committee. 10 faculty. Follows the recommendation of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics (COIA), of which ECU is a member. The purpose is

· Bring Faculty Senate oversight to this area of campus life, and

· Conduct intercollegiate athletics in a manner similar to other university activities.

The UAC reports:

If the "sense of the UAC" can be summarized in one sentence, it would be:

"While the existence of intercollegiate athletics is problematic in the eyes of many faculty both at ECU and nationally, the ECU UAC reports that ECU Athletics continues to operate with integrity with respect to the academic mission of East Carolina University."

"Clean bill of health." We also note the following:

• There are systemic problems in big-time intercollegiate athletics, especially in the high profile sports of football and men's basketball, but all sports are subject to pressures to perform at the highest levels of competition. These pressures can lead to undesirable academic compromises.
• The problem of big-time intercollegiate athletics is, simply put, the tendency to treat intercollegiate athletics as entertainment. To the extent that athletics becomes entertainment then the temptation to treat student-athletes as entertainers will lead to academic integrity problems problems.
• The UAC sees no evidence of academic integrity problems with ECU Athletics.
• Two examples of "entertainment" problems: the athletics arms race, which leads to increasing pressure to raise tremendous amounts of money to fund this entertainment industry. Locally this resulted in increases of 10%/year in student fees for athletics from 2002-2006. Chancellor addressed this issue earlier today.
• Athletic Advisement. The UAC signed off on a report recommending better facilities for advising athletes. To the extent that advisement exists to facilitate athletic eligibility then we need to be careful. Again, ECU athlete advisement is rated "excellent" by the UAC for both its quality and the goal of helping students who are athletes obtain an academic degree.

The UAC also reports:

• ECU is a leader in C-USA in limiting missed-class time due to travel. Athletic Director Holland and FAR David Dosser are to be commended for raising this issue and creating solutions – even to the point they offered to place ECU teams at a competitive disadvantage.
• The Athletic Department responded to every request for information without any foot-dragging or hesitation of any kind. There is a spirit of transparency or sunshine in ECU Athletics that is a national model and demonstrates excellent leadership.
• The Athletic Department is working hard to be well integrated into the university mission.
• In sum: ECU has had a tradition of good administration of athletics going back to AD Nephi Jorgensen in the 40s to 60s, and continuing through ADs Clarence Stasovich, Bill Cain, Ken Karr, Dave Hart, Henry VanSant, Mike Hamrick, Nick Floyd, and Terry Holland. We are both lucky and good. The UAC will accept both explanations.

Questions.

During the 2006/2007 academic year the committee met to discuss the following items, and made the following observations and recommendations:

• Discussion: “Critical Needs of the Student Development Office, Department of Athletics”.  The UAC received this report and accepted the recommendations in it for improving the advisement of student-athletes. The committee discussed the COIA best practice plank to "integrate" athletics advising into the university advisement efforts as much as possible. http://www.neuro.uoregon.edu/~tublitz/COIA/A5.html)
• Sense of the committee is that ECU faculty are relatively unaware of intercollegiate athletics issues. Action: take positive steps to inform the faculty of intercollegiate athletics issues by regularly reporting to the Faculty Senate, and in outlets such as The East Carolinian and Announce. It was also suggested that a newsletter be generated from the UAC for faculty information purposes.
• The Visiting Student Access program was developed to ensure that the academic support needs of C-USA student-athletes involved in away-from-home competitions are being met. The program affords visiting student-athletes access to libraries, computers, and exam proctors when they are traveling to another member institution for athletic competition. During conference tournaments, the host institution will make every effort to meet the academic needs of visiting student-athletes so that they can keep up with their academic demands. This program was implemented by the conference following approval by the Board of Directors on October 6, 2006.
• Faculty Senate Resolution #06-04 is entitled, “Resolution on Practical Measures to Reduce Class Days Missed Due to Athletic Competition.” This resolution was drafted and proposed by the University Athletics Committee, approved by the Faculty Senate on January 31, 2006, and approved by the Chancellor on February 6, 2006. The resolution calls on the Athletic Director and Chancellor to work with other C-USA members to take all practical measures to reduce the class days missed due to athletic competition. These measures should include but not be limited to:

· the timely completion of a study that applies standardized measures to determine the extent of the missed class problem,

· establishing specific policies that result in a 25% reduction in missed class days over a two-year period,

· eliminating scheduling of mid-week conference contests whenever practical, and

· creating conference tournament schedules that do not conflict with the primary academic mission of the conference members.

· Most recently the University of Houston Faculty Senate voted on this resolution.

· Missed school days for athletic participation report distributed. It was noted that volleyball had 10 missed class days, and women’s soccer had 9 missed class days, in Fall 2006. A lot of these missed class days were due to the tournament; this is related to AD Holland’s proposal by volleyball to coordinate travel schedules (below).

· ECU's Athletic Department is aggressively working toward a policy that will limit missed class time by improved scheduling. ECU Athletics is to be commended with is efforts to take a leadership role on this issue, especially Athletic Director Terry Holland, Executive Associate Director of Athletics Nick Floyd, and Faculty Athletic Representative David Dosser.

• Discussed student fees for athletics, and a summary of fees was provided:
• 1970 to 1980 fees were $28.00.
• 1980 to 1996 fees increased to $235
• 1996 to 2002 fees increased to $300 (about 3% per year)
• 2002 to 2006 fees increased to $436 (about 10% per year)
• The UAC supports the current process of requesting fees from Student Government to set fees for Athletics; rate increases should be considered in the context of all tuition and fee increases at ECU.
• UAC reminds faculty to refer to ECU's policy for excused absences for all students, including athletes. All student complaints brought to the attention of the FAR regarding incorrect absence policies published in class syllabi were resolved by informing the involved faculty of ECU policy.
• The Academic Integrity Subcommittee reviewed the academic performance of student-athletes by team. The progress of specific individuals and teams were discussed. The UAC reports that the progress of student-athletes at ECU is at least on par with that of the student body at-large, and, on average, student-athletes out-perform their male and female non-athlete counterparts.
• The UAC discussed the effort to reform intercollegiate athletics. See Benford, R. (2007). The College Sports Reform Movement: Reframing the "Edutainment" Industry. The Sociological Quarterly. Midwest Sociological Society, 1-28. In general there is an increasingly large body of literature that questions the role of intercollegiate athletics with respect to traditional university missions. All of the issues discussed in the University Athletics Committee are addressed in this article and by the "reform movement industry."

If the "sense of the UAC" can be summarized in one sentence, it would be:

"While the existence of intercollegiate athletics is problematic in the eyes of many faculty both at ECU and nationally, the ECU UAC reports that ECU Athletics continues to operate with integrity with respect to the academic mission of East Carolina University."