Academic support reformed

For better or worse, the NCAA investigation has left a lasting imprint on UNC’s Academic Support Program for Student Athletes.

Since the NCAA’s allegations of academic misconduct surfaced more than a year ago, the University has worked to reform the support program, levying tighter restrictions on tutors and on the ways in which tutors communicate with student athletes.

How the school will monitor those student-tutor interactions, though, remains to be seen.

“It’s really difficult to monitor something like that,” said Robert Mercer, director of the ASPSA. “Because you’re really saying, ‘How do you monitor someone’s email?’ I think there is certainly some privacy that needs to be maintained.

“I think the best way is to attack it from an educational point of view — that this is simply a policy, and that if we find anything different, then we’re going to have to act on it.”

Communication between student athletes and tutors is now restricted to in-person tutoring sessions at the academic support center or through a full-time academic counselor, according to the University’s response letter to the NCAA released Sept. 19.

In the past the ASPSA had prohibited electronic communication related to academic assignments, Mercer said. But the emphasis has shifted toward eliminating electronic correspondence altogether.

“It may be that now if a tutor is running late to a session … that you’re not contacting the student to let them know that,” Mercer said, noting that a full-time ASPSA staffer would likely serve as an intermediary in such a scenario.

“If the student texts you and says, ‘Oh, I’m running late. I’m not going to be there,’ that sometimes can lead to other conversations electronically.”

That type of electronic communication is partly what put UNC in hot water in the first place. According to the response letter, it was through email evidence that the University discovered academic improprieties within the ASPSA.

As alleged by the NCAA and confirmed by the University, a part-time academic mentor provided football players with impermissible academic assistance in 2008 and 2009, using email as a means
of communication.

The response also notes that in the summer of 2009, concerns arose that the academic mentor in question “had become too close to football student athletes socially.”

Consequently, the ASPSA’s academic mentor program has been dropped. Academic mentors were mostly undergraduate students with a background in education and worked mainly — but not exclusively — with UNC football players, Mercer said.

The ASPSA’s learning assistants now provide those mentor services, and the program has expanded its tutoring staff, hiring writing tutors — most of whom are graduate students. Of the program’s 80 tutors, fewer than five are undergraduates.

“We’re not eliminating undergraduates,” said Steve Reznick, chairman of the faculty athletics committee. “We’re just being more selective on what roles we want undergraduates to play.”

Reznick was part of the task force that reviewed the ASPSA in the spring. While Reznick said the investigation had a definite impact on the process, a review had already been planned for the program in anticipation of its move to the Loudermilk Center for Excellence this August.

The center, located in the Blue Zone, was constructed as part of the Kenan Stadium renovation, and the 150,000 square-foot facility has afforded the ASPSA more room for expanding the program.

The program hasn’t yet finished fleshing out its staff, though. As laid out in the response letter, a new tutor-coordinator position has been developed to recruit tutors and monitor their effectiveness. The program has not yet begun interviewing for the position, but Mercer said that several resumes have already been submitted.

Monitoring duties will also be assigned to a faculty advisory committee that has been reconstituted, Mercer said. The committee is hoping to meet twice this semester and is designed to closely watch the ASPSA.

“There’s always been an advisory committee, but it’s probably not been as active as it was when we first started the program and put it under arts and sciences,” athletic director Dick Baddour said.

“It’s very important that a program such as this has a strong connect with the teaching faculty. And so, what this will ensure is that that relationship is strong.”

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