WIU Athletics Selected for NCAA Accelerating Academic Success Program Grant
Western Illinois University Athletics has been selected to receive an NCAA Accelerating Academic Success Program (AASP) Grant of nearly $90,000. These competitive grants are awarded to assist schools in creating programs and systems to enhance the academic success and holistic experience of student-athletes. WIU student-athletes’ retention and graduation rates, a year-long holistic review of athletics’ compliance and academic procedures, interviews with student-athletes, academic advisors, coaches, and faculty, and input from the Academic Progress Rate Improvement Team, comprised of WIU administrators and staff, was used to develop the grant application.
There are three critical issues the grant dollars will address:
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Data collection, verification, and monitoring;
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Facilitating professional development and training related to eligibility, certification, and academic achievement; and
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Coordinating efforts for increasing retention through enhancing holistic student-athlete success and support.
Leatherneck Athletics has established department-wide recruitment criteria, enacted supervised study hall requirements for student-athletes, implemented a triage system for providing academic support to those most in need, and has refined, implemented, and coordinated certification and monitoring processes.
“WIU has been doing things well, but these dollars will allow us to more effectively use the limited human resources we have in more efficient ways to serve our student-athletes, and to assist in the support of all students,” said Dr. Jeremy Robinett, NCAA Faculty Athletics Representative. “These funds allow athletics to be a better campus partner through collaborations with other support services that can be sustained moving forward.”
The $88,551 grant will be used to create the Student-Athlete Success and Support (SASS) Center. This center, which will be housed in the Malpass Library, will allow for better collaboration among WIU’s academic support units. Leatherneck Athletics has worked with the Student Learning Center and University Writing Center to identify ways to better serve WIU’s entire student population; including using grant dollars to increase the number of tutoring hours available to all students on campus and to ease the use of tutoring services through an intuitive and easy-to-use appointment management system that the University Writing Center implemented.
The grant will fund five graduate assistantships for the 2024-2025 academic year. Two will assist with athletics compliance; three will focus on academic success and support and aid the one full-time staff person in the Student-Athlete Success and Support Center. These assistants will help to remedy the full-time staff reduction in athletics, which are positions that will not be replaced due to current budgetary constraints. The graduate assistants will provide scheduled, ongoing academic support to student-athletes according to their level of need. Given that student-athletes comprise nearly 10% of the Macomb student population, the timely interventions of the graduate assistants will allow academic support services in other areas of campus to provide more time to other students.
The remaining grant dollars will be used for training in compliance, academic success, and retention practices. In addition to providing travel dollars for NCAA trainings, funds have also been designated to bring recognized professionals to campus to provide education on best practices for compliance, recruitment, retention, and academic success. While these trainings will highlight athletic issues, in accordance with the NCAA-funded grant, there will be opportunities for the campus at large to engage and to learn how to more effectively and efficiently serve all students.
