UNC sets guidelines for athletes, coaches and academics

UNC-Chapel Hill has outlined in an online report guidelines to clarify proper communication among coaches, advisers and faculty about athletes’ grades and academic progress.

The guidelines prohibit coaches from initiating contact with faculty members about an athletes’ grades and academic performance. They also prohibit faculty members from asking advisers about what grade an athlete would need to maintain eligibility. Advisers also aren’t allowed to offer that information.

The guidelines are part of a broad website the university launched on Wednesday after a two-year project that attempted, UNC wrote in an open letter, to “document and assess all academic processes that affect student-athletes from the time that they are recruited until after they graduate.”

The guidelines that describe proper communication channels among coaches, advisers and faculty members aren’t necessarily new but are instead designed to clarify “what the responsibilities and expectations are,” UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham said on Thursday.

UNC is in the midst of an NCAA investigation into a long-running system of fraudulent African- and Afro-American Studies independent studies courses that for 18 years offered high grades in exchange for little to no work. A disproportionate number of athletes were found to be enrolled in the courses.

“I think our campus has been engaged in this conversation for five years,” Cunningham said, “about the athletic program and what we’ve done well, what we may have missed on and how we can improve.”

The website UNC launched comes amid one NCAA investigation and more than three years after another one ended. The earlier investigation focused on impermissible benefits and academic fraud within the football program.

During the past five years UNC has conducted several internal investigations that have led to numerous reforms. The website it launched on Wednesday made clear how faculty members should communicate with the members of the Academic Support Programs for Student-Athletes (ASPSA).

The first bullet point in that section says “student-athletes are students first.”

“Decisions about academic content, requirements and expectations are the exclusive domain of faculty, subject to University, College and Department rules,” the website reads.

ASPSA counselors are expected to serve as liaisons between athletes and their instructors. UNC’s online report makes clear that “ASPSA does not attempt to pressure faculty to provide special treatment” for athletes, or to influence their grades.

Further, coaches who are concerned about an athletes’ grades or academic performance must first go through ASPSA. Coaches are also prohibited from discussing athletes’ grades with class checkers, whose responsibility is to specifically check class attendance.

Cunningham and James Dean, UNC’s Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, led the 10-person “Student-Athlete Academic Initiative Working Group” that spent two years studying the academic experience of UNC athletes. The website documents everything from the recruiting process to how athletes who leave UNC can return to earn a degree.

The Working Group’s report also included a long list of recommendations – many of which the university has already implemented – to improve athletes’ academic experience. The recommendations the website outlines came mostly from other internal reports, or from the earlier NCAA investigation that ended in 2012.

“We’ve gotten all kinds of recommendations from various reports and groups throughout the last four or five years and it’s given us a chance to kind of fully vet the recommendations or ideas, analyze what we do and make any modifications to the processes that are already there,” Cunningham said.

This story was originally published October 15, 2015 at 7:18 PM with the headline "UNC sets guidelines for athletes, coaches and academics."