COMMITTEE:          University Athletics Committee

 

MEETING DATE:   March 3, 2009

 

PERSON PRESIDING:     Mike Felts

 

REGULAR MEMBERS IN ATTENDANCE:   

Mike Felts, Scott Below, Rosina Chia, Sunday Ajose, Cal Christian, Lori Flint, Mark Moore, 

 

EX-OFFICIO MEMBERS IN ATTENDANCE:  

David Dosser, Joe Luczkovich, Nita Boyce, Stacey Altman, Nick Floyd, Nancy Mize, Austin Bunch, Tim Metcalf

 

OTHERS IN ATTENDANCE:      

Terry Holland, Tyler Richardson, Gary Overton

 

ACTIONS OF MEETING

 

Agenda Item: Approval of minutes

Discussion: Approved as written.

Action Taken: Approved minutes.

 

Agenda Item: Report from David Dosser. Information shared on NCAA web-based data driven program,  Facilitating Learning & Achieving Graduation (FLAG). This is the result of a NCAA working group examining issues related to academic risk and how to make it simple for academic support and compliance groups to identify and support at-risk students, raise graduation rate, and APR scores. Student athletes can become at risk at any time during their college career, for a variety of reasons, thus need constant monitoring. This program is voluntary, not required, and could be used in a number of ways, including: with teams that have APR issues; with all teams to compare across and between teams, which could help validate the instrument. 

 

Discussion: Student athletes could also benefit from early and close contact with faculty in their majors, to help them be more academically successful. 

Action Taken: Examine existing models of faculty involvement.

Assigned additional duties to:

 

Affirmation of respect for Nita Boyce and her AT Student Development staff for all they do for student athletes at ECU, serving as the first line of defense for at-risk student athletes in innumerable ways.

 

Agenda Item: Nita Boyce presented a report on the clustering of student athletes among majors (data were extracted from Banner).

Discussion: Discussion of how our students are clustered at ECU and possibly why it happens this way; discussion of how various departments and schools report majors. Question posed: how many student athletes actually graduated in each major during the last five years

Action Taken: N/A

Assigned additional duties to: Nita Boyce will share information at our next meeting

 

 

 

Agenda Item: Athletics: Terry Holland reported 29 sporting and non-sporting events, including a Board of Trustees meeting, over a one-week period before this meeting. The Board of Trustees approved the facilities site plan, as submitted. This includes a 7,000 seat addition to the end-zone. If there is revenue available from season ticket sales and pledges, the project will be bid. If no money, it will not be bid and we will not "create inventory we can't sell." ECU will also work with neighborhood associations and other entities to mitigate impact of such addition.

 

Olympic sports facilities are set to go. Softball field should be ready for 2010, which will start the domino effect of one facility after another being moved, started, completed, etc.

 

Met with Conference Commissioner, lunched with Chancellor to discuss ways the conference could support teams in the current fiscal environment. Several suggestions were discussed for ways to save money on team travel, including expanding conference teams, have men's and women's teams travel and play at same times, and others.

 

Athletics is anticipating at least a 10% reduction in fund raising and ticket sales, which could negatively impact out-of-state tuition waivers for athletics scholarships, which are funded by athletics, not by the university. The 18% cap on out-of-state students is not affected by these athletes, as they take the place of in-state students, leaving the entire 18% available for other students (non-athletes).

Discussion: Because of how this is funded, there is no reason for it to become the target of budget-cutting. Also, Athletics needs to maintain a balanced budget, as we cannot yet know how severely athletics will be affected by economic conditions in both the near and far term.

Action Taken: N/A

Assigned additional duties to: N/A

 

 

NEXT MEETING:   April 7, 2009, 3:30 pm

 

 

 

ITEMS TO BE DISCUSSED:

 

 

Respectfully Submitted,

Lori J. Flint

Secretary, University Athletics Committee