The NCAA requires its member institutions to conduct a self-study of its intercollegiate athletics program every five years with the purpose of enhancing integrity amongst members. Erskine will be required to complete its third Institutional Self-Study Guide (ISSG) by June 2011. It will also be my third journey through what I originally deemed as a tedious process. I first worked on an ISSG in 1998 while athletics director at St. Andrews College. I was fairly new to collegiate athletics administration so I was extremely fortunate to have a Vice-President at St. Andrews named Bill Loftis who did most of the work for me especially on the documentation. Erskine completed its first ISSG in 2000 under the direction of athletics director Chip Sherer. Chip’s work was such good quality that by 2005 little had changed in Erskine Athletics and therefore few revisions were needed. Now here it is 2010 and we begin the process again. The problem is however, that this time, much has changed with both participation and operations and the process will be far more complex than it was in 2005. Hopefully the effort and the outcome will help us on our journey to enhance integrity in Flying Fleet Athletics.
I decided Friday to begin preliminary work on the ISSG. My first task was reviewing the 2000 and 2005 documents. It was these documents that inspired my blog this week. And one word stood out, growth. In 2000, Erskine athletics reported that 135 student-athletes participated on sports teams. The Erskine student body was comprised of 495 students, meaning 27% of the student body participated in sports. The number of athletes grew to 170 in 2005 as the student body reached 545, meaning 31% of the student body were athletes. The 2010 numbers are decidedly different. This year 250 students at Erskine out of a student body of 530 have a link to intercollegiate athletics. Today 47% of Erskine students participate in athletics, up from 27% ten years ago. We project that within our 14 sports teams we will have 280 student athletes in the fall of 2011. If that happens, Erskine Athletics will have doubled its participation levels in eleven years. There are many positives to that increased participation level but there are also many fears. My fears as we began to grow five years ago were that we would see a gradual decline in academic excellence and a gradual increase in disciplinary problems. Every collegiate athletics program deals with disciplinary issues, but the reality is that we dealt with just as many seven years ago when I first became athletics director as we do today (please hear the knock on wood).
So what about academic excellence? Erskine Athletics has long been recognized with high graduation rates, and we definitely didn’t want to see that drop with higher participation numbers. Last spring we saw half of our student-athletes make the Conference Carolinas Presidential Honor Roll (3.0 GPA or higher). But the more telling sign came with the release of our graduation rates for 2010. The data lists our student-athlete graduation rate at 77% while the graduation rate for all students is 69%. Considering student-athletes are factored into all students, it is safe to comment that the graduation rates for Erskine student-athletes is quite a bit higher than the rest of the student body. As the late and former President of the NCAA Myles Brand once said, “In God we trust, for everything else bring data.” We have data that supports we can grow and not lose ground on academic quality. We know it will always be a challenge but it is a major focus for all of our coaches.
I know the ISSG will unveil many changes needed to be made in Erskine Athletics. It will be a long process but by June I think all of our department will be the better off because we went through it. Flying Fleet Athletics is quite different than it was ten years ago. Change is good and so is growth. I hope someone undertakes this task in five years and finds growth still at the forefront of Erskine Athletics. Go Fleet!
I decided Friday to begin preliminary work on the ISSG. My first task was reviewing the 2000 and 2005 documents. It was these documents that inspired my blog this week. And one word stood out, growth. In 2000, Erskine athletics reported that 135 student-athletes participated on sports teams. The Erskine student body was comprised of 495 students, meaning 27% of the student body participated in sports. The number of athletes grew to 170 in 2005 as the student body reached 545, meaning 31% of the student body were athletes. The 2010 numbers are decidedly different. This year 250 students at Erskine out of a student body of 530 have a link to intercollegiate athletics. Today 47% of Erskine students participate in athletics, up from 27% ten years ago. We project that within our 14 sports teams we will have 280 student athletes in the fall of 2011. If that happens, Erskine Athletics will have doubled its participation levels in eleven years. There are many positives to that increased participation level but there are also many fears. My fears as we began to grow five years ago were that we would see a gradual decline in academic excellence and a gradual increase in disciplinary problems. Every collegiate athletics program deals with disciplinary issues, but the reality is that we dealt with just as many seven years ago when I first became athletics director as we do today (please hear the knock on wood).
So what about academic excellence? Erskine Athletics has long been recognized with high graduation rates, and we definitely didn’t want to see that drop with higher participation numbers. Last spring we saw half of our student-athletes make the Conference Carolinas Presidential Honor Roll (3.0 GPA or higher). But the more telling sign came with the release of our graduation rates for 2010. The data lists our student-athlete graduation rate at 77% while the graduation rate for all students is 69%. Considering student-athletes are factored into all students, it is safe to comment that the graduation rates for Erskine student-athletes is quite a bit higher than the rest of the student body. As the late and former President of the NCAA Myles Brand once said, “In God we trust, for everything else bring data.” We have data that supports we can grow and not lose ground on academic quality. We know it will always be a challenge but it is a major focus for all of our coaches.
I know the ISSG will unveil many changes needed to be made in Erskine Athletics. It will be a long process but by June I think all of our department will be the better off because we went through it. Flying Fleet Athletics is quite different than it was ten years ago. Change is good and so is growth. I hope someone undertakes this task in five years and finds growth still at the forefront of Erskine Athletics. Go Fleet!
