Student athletes have best GPA in more than 10 years

[Harry]

Tim Cato / Senior Staff Writer

The term “student-athlete” is used for college athletics for a reason – class and sports stand on equal ground. Student athletes must manage homework, tests and projects before worrying about practice, games and road trips – something professional athletes never have to worry about.

Despite the challenges, UNT athletes are finding the perfect balance between the two this year. As a whole, UNT student-athletes had a 3.01 grade point average in the 2012 fall semester.

“We have slowly improved overall as a department,” said Cinnamon Sheffield, the senior associate athletic director for student services. “This past fall was our highest GPA since I’ve been here, since 2001.”

Sheffield is responsible for student academics, helping to get everyone on track. She, along with several academic advisors on staff, meets with the head coaches. Coaches also receive a “good, bad and ugly” report, letting coaches know which players have tests or projects coming up that they need to be studying for.

“When you get the coaches to buy into the overall program, that’s what happens [3.01 GPA],” Sheffield said.

Certain UNT teams and players stand out above the rest. The Mean Green volleyball team won its first ever American Volleyball Coaches Association Team Academic Award in 2011 and followed it up with another in 2012. The award is given to any team that maintains a 3.3 team GPA.

Read more: http://wordpress1.cws.unt.edu/?p=3913

[KRAM1]

Fantastic News! Great job student-athletes! You know, this sort of thing does not happen in a vacuum. There has to be an emphasis on academics from the AD down, with the ultimate responsibility falling upon the student-athletes themselves. GREAT JOB! This sort of news really makes me proud as very very few of these athletes will go on to have careers as professional athletes. But, as the NCAA ad says...they will be professionals in some career field. Great work students and great job from the department placing the emphasis on academics and providing tools and resources to make this happen. WELL DONE!

[jdennis82]

THIS is why I am willing to be patient while the on-field success struggles to gain its footing.

Very proud of this turn around!

[THOR]

Swimming and diving best in the nation...very nice... and continued smarts from the volleyball gals

[Harry]

Very good news. And as J Dennis said makes it much easier to be patient!

[ragpicker]

Great reminder of priorities. The quality of these students will assure athletic success as well as time goes by. Doing things the right way does, indeed, make patience a bit easier.

[greenit]

Finally, a topic that there is no possible way that we can turn negative. Right?

Edited April 18, 2013 by greenit

[Proud North Texan]

Good news!! GMG

[tcat75]

Also, shattering the "I do dah football sport harhar" stigma, football upped its overall GPA to 2.7.

[chomp]

A lot of credit for this goes to the academic support folks in the athletic department. Compared to how things were when I first arrived at UNT, they have really stepped up monitoring of student athlete performance in the classroom over the course of the semester. I now get a request for information on the status of athletes in my classes every couple of weeks from the athletic department.

[Green Dozer]

Very good news. And as J Dennis said makes it much easier to be patient!

Yep, we are celebrating 100 years of "patience" this fall! Edited April 21, 2013 by Green Dozer

[Harry]

A lot of credit for this goes to the academic support folks in the athletic department. Compared to how things were when I first arrived at UNT, they have really stepped up monitoring of student athlete performance in the classroom over the course of the semester. I now get a request for information on the status of athletes in my classes every couple of weeks from the athletic department.

Great info and thank you for sharing!

[JesseMartin]

Great news! I actually applied to be a part-time academic advisor for the AD over a decade ago and didn't get called back, but when I was a TA during grad school I knew who the athletes were. I always made sure to tell them how much they were appreciated, and that since they were at UNT, that meant we thought of them as better students than most other schools treat their athletes, so they were respected enough to earn their grades and show off their skills in the classroom as well as in their sport.

I don't think any of them ever made below a B in any of my Political Science classes when I was a TA. I really think that having the AD integrated as much as possible with the academic side makes our athletes amazing leaders on campus. To be a great academic example as well as training and competing as hard as possible allows student athletes to be extremely prepared for the challenges of post-collegiate life.