Jackson State University President Carolyn W. Meyers will deliver a presentation about JSU’s strategies for improving academic success among student-athletes at the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s 2014 convention this week in San Diego.
The convention brings together college and university athletic directors and personnel from around the country, as well as presidents and academic leaders.
Meyers will speak about Jackson State’s strategy of sharing the responsibility for the success of student-athletes.
The strategy is known as JSU’s “CORE” values. CORE stands for Commitment, Organization, Responsibility and Education.
“Those values have contributed greatly to the academic success of our student-athletes over the past three years,” said Adrianne Swinney, associate athletic director. “They have been essential in helping us to bring up our APR scores. CORE has played the most critical part of that.”
In recent years, Jackson State has been working to steadily improve Academic Progress Rates (APR), Graduation Success Rates, Federal Graduation Rates, team and division grade point averages and credit hours earned for the student-athletes participating in JSU’s 18 athletic programs. Those efforts have yielded great results. All of JSU’s athletic programs now meet the APR benchmarks.
The NCAA awarded Jackson State University $900,000 in 2012 to further enhance the academic outcomes of JSU student-athletes. The funds, which are being dispersed over three years, are part of the NCAA’s Accelerating Academic Success Pilot Program.