Grades Continue To Rise Among UW Athletic Programs
January 27, 2016 | General, Student-Athlete Academic Services
By Mason Kelley
GoHuskies.com
At some point, Washington is going to hit a ceiling. There is a point when the steady rise of grade-point averages among the university's athletic programs will end.
A future fall quarter would make sense. With 240 freshmen adjusting to life in college, there would be a reason for a dip in grades. As the school year progresses and more teams are in season, it wouldn't be a surprise to see a dip in winter or spring.
But at Washington, grades continue to shift in a positive direction. There hasn't been a dip. The department has yet to reach a ceiling.
“We really haven't had a dip in a number of years,” said Kim Durand, Washington's associate athletic director for student development. “We've been inching up to the point where we are now, setting GPA records, putting more kids on the dean's list and having more success with some of our teams that haven't had success.”
At the end of fall quarter, 17 teams were above a 3.0 G.P.A. The athletic department had 125 students earn a spot on the Dean's List with 73 percent of the university's student athletes finishing with at least a 3.0.
Washington's football team will have to add some extra room to its 3.0 board with 80 players in the program hitting the mark.
The baseball program set a record with a 3.23 G.P.A., and the men's basketball team hit a new high with a 2.89. Three teams – gymnastics, women's soccer and women's tennis – all ended the first quarter of the academic year with better than a 3.40.
Durand sees the numbers, and knows Washington's athletic programs are performing at an elite level academically but, when she meets with colleagues across the country, she can't help but ask, “Are we in rare air here?”
The simple answer – yes.
“It is just part of the culture, the teamwork,” Durand said. “We just really have a system that is functioning on all cylinders right now.”
Talk to Washington football coach Chris Petersen and he says his best teams have always been the ones with players taking care of business off the field, specifically the classroom.
His focus on academics matches the approach taken by the heads of each program throughout Washington's athletic department.
In fact, grades have become a competition of sorts for programs with a high team G.P.A. It means something for a team to finish with the best grades in an athletic department where just about every program is hitting academic highs.
“It's just a culture of excellence and competition,” Durand said. “We do it in this realm, in addition to what we're doing on the field.”
It starts at the top. Coaches are recruiting athletes focused on academics. As a university, Washington is an elite institution, so the marriage of athletics and academics makes sense.
Once the athletes arrive on campus, they have a brand new academics facility – the Ackerley Academic Center – in the athletic village and a Student Athlete Academic Services team Durand says works “magic.”
Durand believes her staff is the best in the nation.
“We don't have a weak link,” Durand said. “They inspire me every day.”
Washington's new academic center is so popular among athletes there is often a line of students waiting outside each morning before it opens.
“It's fun, hip, a quiet place to study,” Durand said. “It's made a huge difference in the caliber academically of the top athletes we're recruiting.”
From Petersen setting a new academic standard for the football team to the addition of the new academic center, Washington is in the middle of a “perfect storm” of academic success.
For someone like Durand, whose focus is finding ways to help athletes find as much success in the classroom as they do on the field, seeing new academic records each quarter is “inspiring.”
“It's unbelievable,” she said. “I think it's really, really rare that you get a place that sincerely buys in and is holistically into developing young people.”
It is one thing to work toward athletic championships. It is another thing to be sincere about developing people along the way.
There will come a day when Washington hits an academic ceiling as an athletic department, but until that moment arrives, Durand and her staff will continue to celebrate every success while working to further the wave of academic accomplishments throughout the department.
“So much of what we do you can't quantify, so when you have those experiences and then can quantify it, that's pretty amazing.”
