onupolarbears: Academics - our first priority!

ONU was once again rated by the US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT as one of the premier institutions in the Midwest. This distinction is certainly impressive, and with the women's basketball program, we pride ourselves on living up to the expectation of excellence. Academic success is our program pillar, and as a staff, we have put together a game plan to achieve our goal of a 3.2 Team GPA every quarter. This is what we call our ACADEMIC MENTORING PLAN:

Here's how it works:
1. All new persons in the program are assigned a coach (Coach Durand or Coach Terrell).

This person meets with that coach every other Friday during fall quarter (5x on a 10 week quarter). These meetings involve checking planners, going through course syllabi, talking about the transition to our university as well as problem solving for areas that might be causing the student-athlete trouble. It's a great opportunity to offset potential problems, but it also gets the athlete in the office to talk with coaches! Typically, our new people start off quiet - that does not last long though :)

2. All new persons in the program are assigned a PEER mentor within the program:

We partner new people with a veteran in the same major or a like major. This is their "peer mentor." That mentor is responsible for that person - they have to set up distinct study times for the week based on arranging schedules. We ask that they get 4 hours of time together a week (2-2hour blocks)
We put them with a peer because of 2 reasons - first, that person has gone through what that new person is going to experience, especially in the like major, and secondly, it makes that mentor take on leadership responsibility. They are responsible for reporting to the coaching staff any concerns, the days that they are meeting, etc. This is a great way as a team to emphasize that we are all in this together and it's our responsibility to each other to make sure we are being the best students we can be.

3. We do grade checks/reports that go to faculty 2x / quarter

Having this game plan and implementing it consistently has brought us success academically. We are proud of our 100% graduation rate, but we are also proud to be leaders in the classroom on campus. It's expected to always be the best in everything we do. Typically, we don't have too many issues - our students come in with high expectations of themselves to achieve academic success. But, from the coaching staff standpoint, we make sure we are all on the same page about our priorities.

From our Spring Quarter (2009) our top 3 GPA student-athletes were: