Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 18:05:32 -0600 From: Elizabeth Bradley To: Karl.Mueller@Colorado.EDU, Martha.Hanna@Colorado.EDU, e.scott.adler@Colorado.EDU, helen.norton@Colorado.EDU, David.Clough@Colorado.EDU, tsnow@origins.Colorado.edu, Michael.Bohn@Colorado.EDU, Cecelia.Barry@Colorado.EDU, Barbara.Bintliff@Colorado.EDU, Kim.Trenbath@Colorado.EDU, lieschen@parachutes.com, Gail.Pederson@Colorado.EDU, Maureen.Ryan@Colorado.EDU, Rosella.Chavez@Colorado.EDU Subject: May BFA Intercollegiate Athletics Committee meeting follow-up Reply-To: Elizabeth Bradley cc: walkerde@Colorado.EDU, tsnow@origins.Colorado.edu, Jeff.Frykholm@Colorado.EDU, caley.dow@Colorado.EDU Dear All: This is really a follow up message for May *and* April, as I didn't have time to do the April one until now. I apologize for the delay - and the resulting length. _______________________________________ MEMBERSHIP: The new membership of this committee has been set, and the new roster rolled in on Mike Bohn's Blackberry during the meeting. Many thanks to those who are rotating off (Ted, Deward, and Jeff), and many welcomes to the new people (Karl Mueller, Scott Adler, and Helen Norton). (If any of you rotators-off wish to remain on the ex-officio list for this committee over the next year, please let me know.) Here's the committee webpage, for those who are new: www.cs.colorado.edu/~lizb/bfa-iac.html MEETING TIME FOR NEXT YEAR: The last wednesday of each month at 1pm: Aug 27 (classes start 8/25) Sep 24 Oct 29 Nov 26 (or should we move earlier to avoid Thanksgiving?) Dec 17 (classes end 12/12; finals end 12/18) Jan 28 Feb 25 Mar 18 (3/25 is spring break) Apr 29 (classes end 1 May) This will accomodate everyone who was at the meeting, plus Caley Dow and Barbara Bintliff, who emailed me their constraints. [Caley is going to come brief us in the fall about the student-athlete-led efforts to improve relations between the SAs and the community.] ************************************************************** Did Ekeley work for everyone, or should we move somewhere else for the year? If so, please suggest a location. ************************************************************** 2008 COIA MEETING: Martha Hanna (bless her) will represent CU at this meeting. The committee charged her to tell the people at that meeting about all the good things that CU has been doing, and to bring back lots of good intelligence about what else we could be doing. ISSUES OF THE DAY: Dave Clough gave us a succinct, effective, interesting briefing on these four issues: 1. independent study classes: history, process, statistics There were some problems with idpt studies here at CU in the late 80s, which resulted in the current "contract" system. This has worked very well. Currently, the % of student-athletes who take idpt studies at CU is lower than the corresponding % of the overall student body. So there is certainly no Michigan-esque abuse going on. Bob Sievers raised the concern that SAs may be UNDERutilizing this important learning opportunity, and suggested that we should do the same kind of comparison with summa cum laude graduates (% of SAs vs. % of overall). We should continue to monitor all of this yearly, as is on our charge. 2. courses with high student-athlete enrollment There are a few courses with high (% wise) SA enrollment. Dave & Ceal are doing a review of this and will report to the committee early next year. Some suggestions/questions that came up: how to handle the small classes and the classes w/no SAs, how to control for the grapevine effect, etc. We should also monitor this yearly, per our charge. 3. major choice among SAs Dave showed us a chart with the number of SAs in each major. Sociology was the highest, with IPHY, PSYC, business, finance, and management right behind. COMM, which used to be highest, is now 16th, perhaps because of their new entrance requirments. Apparently the NCAA % completion requirements constrain major choices as well. %s. Again, we should continue to monitor this yearly, per our charge. When we do so, it would be nice to normalize against dept size to make the raw headcounts into percentages. 4. the APR ("academic progress rate") process This was fascinating and very useful and I can't possibly do it justice here, but here's a synopsis: - each SA who's on aid can garner 0-2 points for CU: 1 for staying in school and 1 for remaining eligible - there's a forgiveness mechanism for people who go pro, and a bonus point for CU if someone comes back later & graduates - a "zero for two" - even a single one - can trigger serious consequences ranging from loss of scholarships to loss of practice time to no post season play to probation. - an aggregate rating of <900 for a team triggers a longer-term process (the "historical penalty structure") that involves penalties, improvement plans, and stair-step escalations of former if latter aren't met - an APR of 925 corresponds to a "federal graduation rate" of ~50% and an "NCAA graduation rate" of ~60% (the latter removes transfers from the equation) - there was one other important acronym whose decoding I didn't write down...GSR...? _______________________________________________________________________ APRIL MEETING FOLLOW UP: - Liz reported on her meeting with Nancy Hogshead-Makar, the new Title IX advisor. - We decided not to revisit the BFA Resolution on Faculty Involvement in Athletics, but that we would revisit the BFA Motion on Interaction between Athletics and Academics (aka class absence policy) early next year. This is particularly timely & important because of some issues that Ted brought up in regard to club sports and the letters that they send out about class absences, so that will be an important agenda item for our first or second meeting in the fall (along with at least a bit of discussion about whether we should take on club sports as well as those that run through Mike Bohn's operation). - We also spent some time talking about the BFA COIA situation and the Michigan situation. _______________________________________________________________________ Whew. Have a nice summer, and I'll see you on August 27th at 1pm, location TBD. Oh, and Maureen wants to know what we've decided about who's chairing the committee next year. I'm happy to continue, but equally happy to defer if anyone else wants to take over. Liz -- ================================================================+========== + Liz Bradley Professor \ + + Department of Computer Science \ + + Internet: lizb@colorado.edu O )) + + Voice: (303) 492-5355 Fax: (303) 492-2844 / + + Web: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lizb / + + USMail: University of Colorado 430 UCB ((O + + Boulder CO 80309-0430 USA + ===========================================================================