Colloquium Topics and Schedule

2008 NCAA Scholarly Colloquium on College Sports

January 10 - 11

Thursday, January 10

9:30 to 11:30 a.m.

Ignore, Idealize or Condemn: "Scholarly" Approaches to Intercollegiate Sports

Presented by Professor Jay Coakley

Research faculty seldom study sports on their campuses. Is it too challenging to investigate the immediate contexts of their lives, or is the paucity of empirically based knowledge about intercollegiate sports due to other factors? Let's answer this question and initiate research needed to make informed decisions about the role of competitive sports in higher education. But before collecting new data, we must know what we already know and don't know, and how we might use existing data to add to our knowledge.

SPEAKER BIO: Jay Coakley received in 1972 a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Notre Dame. He went on to teach at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and began nearly four decades of research on play, games and sports. Much of his work focuses on the ways youth make sense of their physical activities and integrate them into their lives. His findings have enabled him to work effectively with parents, coaches and sport administrators, showing how they might use the perspectives of young people to organize sports in ways that are exciting at the same time that they contribute to positive development. Coakley's most recent research focuses on popular narratives about youth sport and personal development, parental commitment to the sport participation of their children and changing approaches to youth sports in China. Coakley has received many teaching, service and professional awards, and is an internationally respected scholar, author and journal editor. His work has been dedicated to making sport participation a source of enjoyment and positive development for young people, and making sports more accessible, democratic and humane for people of all ages.

1 to 3 p.m.

Does Athletics Undermine Academics? Examining Some Issues

Presented by Professor Robert Simon

Critics frequently maintain that intercollegiate athletics undermine the academic mission of colleges and universities, if not in principle then generally in practice. In my paper, I examine certain major arguments for such a view and also consider the claim that intercollegiate athletics and academics not only can be compatible but also can be mutually supportive. My goals are not only to assess the arguments I consider, but also, given the theme of the first NCAA Scholarly Colloquium on College Sports, to suggest areas of further research that might shed additional light on the questions considered.

Specifically, I consider three objections to mutual reinforcement: that intercollegiate athletics presupposes values hostile to critical inquiry, that intercollegiate athletics discourages moral development of participants and that intercollegiate athletics undermines the academic atmosphere at highly selective colleges and universities. While it is difficult to draw general conclusions, due to the diversity of intercollegiate athletics programs, I suggest that each criticism is, at best, inconclusive. In the course of the discussion, I try to identify assumptions of the critics that seem to me to be controversial and in great need of empirical and normative investigation.

SPEAKER BIO: Robert L. Simon is the Marjorie and Robert W. McEwen Professor of Philosophy at Hamilton College. He is the author of Fair Play; Values and Sport and Neutrality and the Academic Ethics and (with Nornan Bowie) The Individual and the Political Order as well as many articles in ethics, political philosophy and philosophy of sport. He also is the editor of The Blackwell Guide to Social and Political Philosophy. He has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Humanities Center, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He combines his interest in philosophy and sport by having served as President of the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport and as Golf Coach at Hamilton. In 2007, he was named to the Advisory and Editorial Board of the NCAAs new initiative, the Scholarly Colloquium on Intercollegiate Sports, which will encourage research in a variety of disciplines on college sports.

3:30 to 5:30 p.m.

Academics and Athletics: A Part and Apart in the American Campus

Presented by Professor John Thelin

Both academics and athletics are part of the American campus. Yet they often are apart from one another, with each operating in distinctive orbits and by different codes. Given these contrasts, I want to look at some research that has provided useful insights on how intercollegiate sports fit into higher education. Good, serious writing about college sports requires careful sifting and sorting that avoids two polarities in the popular media: on the one hand, exaggerated praise and celebration versus, on the other hand, sensational exposes and allegations of excess and abuse.

SPEAKER BIO: John Thelin is University Research Professor at the University of Kentucky, where he is a member of the Educational Policy Studies Department. An alumnus of Brown University, he was a history major, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and was a varsity letter-winner in wrestling. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Before joining the University of Kentucky in 1996, he was Chancellor Professor at the College of William and Mary and professor at Indiana University, Bloomington. In 1990, he provided expert testimony to the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics for its groundbreaking report on reform. He is author of Games Colleges Play and A History of American Higher Education, both published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. In 2006, he received the University Provost's Award for Outstanding Teaching. A competitive long-distance runner for more than 35 years, he has won state senior championships in Virginia and Kentucky and placed second in the national 8K championship.

Friday, January 11

9:15 to 11:45 a.m.

Issues Related To Academic Support and Performance of Division I Student-Athletes: A Case Study At the University of Minnesota

Presented by Professor Mary Jo Kane

In 2005, President Robert Bruininks launched a historic initiative - Strategic Positioning - to make the University of Minnesota one of the top three public research universities in the world. A key element of strategic positioning is to strengthen the quality of students' educational experiences through major academic initiatives. Because the president made the academic success of all students one of his highest priorities, he actively initiated a task force that would address the academic performance of one critical group of students - student-athletes. The primary charge of the task force was to examine key issues surrounding student-athlete academic outcomes ranging from strengthening undergraduate retention and graduation rates to improving coordination and delivery of academic support services. This was accomplished by:

Collecting and analyzing longitudinal data from 1999-2006 to establish admission profiles of student-athletes, and to use these data to establish benchmark measures of student-athletes? academic performance;
Assessing current practices concerning academic support and performance internal to the university and identify best practices at similar academic institutions; and
Developing and highlighting specific performance strategies that will foster student-athlete academic success rates.

This paper discusses significant findings that emerged from an innovative statistical regression model, as well as key recommendations such as creating comprehensive programs to help student-athletes -especially those who are academically fragile - successfully transition into their academic and social life on a college campus.

SPEAKER BIO: Mary Jo Kane is professor and chair in the School of Kinesiology and the director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Champaign, in 1985 with an emphasis in sport sociology. Professor Kane is an internationally recognized scholar who has published extensively on media representations of female athletes. She is also considered one of the nation's leading experts on the social and political implications of Title IX.

In 1996, Professor Kane was awarded the first Endowed Chair related to women in sport: the Dorothy McNeill and Elbridge Ashcraft Tucker Chair for Women in Sport and Exercise Science. She was recently elected by her peers as a Fellow in the American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education, the highest academic honor in her field. In 2004, Professor Kane received the Scholar of the Year Award from the Women's Sports Foundation. This award is given to individuals who make significant research contributions in the areas of women's sports and physical activity.