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UB won't lower eligibility requirements for student-athletes
By DONNA LONGENECKER
Reporter Assistant Editor
The NCAA is lowering its minimum eligibility requirements for athletic participation, but UB won't follow suit.
In a report to the Faculty Senate Executive Committee yesterday, Judith Adams-Volpe, director of university and external relations for the University Libraries and chair of the Intercollegiate Athletics Board (IAB), presented the details of the change in NCAA policy, as well as UB's own, higher eligibility requirements, which have been in place since 1997.
Adams-Volpe also will present the information to the full Faculty Senate at the group's final meeting of the academic year on Tuesday.
UB admits student-athletes through the Individualized Admissions Program (IAP) with a minimum 740-750 SAT score and a minimum high school grade-point average of 2.675, she reported. The university also will take prospective student-athletes with a minimum grade-point average of 2.0, as long as they have an SAT score of at least 1010, she added.
A letter from Sean P. Sullivan, vice provost for enrollment and planning, to the senate's Admissions and Retention Committee states that the new NCAA guidelines for minimum eligibility allow for lower SAT scores from prospective student-athletes as long as they demonstrate correspondingly higher core high school grade-point averages as specified by the new NCAA initial eligibility index.
"But, UB does not feel that a student with an SAT below 740-750 should be admitted, regardless of their core high school grade-point average, even though the NCAA scale would allow for that admission," Sullivan wrote. "So UB is no longer following completely or endorsing fully the complete minimum standard set by the NCAA as suggested by the 1997 policy."
Adams-Volpe pointed out that very few student-athletes are admitted under the Individualized Admissions Program at UB—most, in fact, are admitted under the same requirements as the general student population.
In other business at yesterday's meeting, outgoing senate Chair Michael Cohen, professor of neurology, reviewed the successes, accomplishments and work yet to be done by the senate during his two years in office.
"Every week I learn more about the real breadth and depth of the university and the only way to do it is to search it out," he said of his effort to increase awareness among Faculty Senate members of the work, research and talents of the faculty and staff at UB. "Both the president and the provost recognize the fact that governance is important on this campus and turn to us as a singular voice—but not the only voice."
Cohen said that while he has been at UB for 30 years, it was his time as chair of the senate that allowed him to really get to know the university and discover "what a really interesting and marvelous place it is."