April 23, 2008
TO: Division I campus and conference athletics communicators
FROM: Erik Christianson, NCAA director of public and media relations
RE: APR public recognition awards
As most of you know, the NCAA will be releasing the Division I Academic Progress Rate public recognition awards on Thursday, April 24, at 2 p.m. Eastern. The awards will be posted on the NCAA website by sport and by institution, and we will distribute a press release nationally with aggregate data about the awards.
Campuses and conferences were provided links to the public recognition information on Monday. You can check with your compliance office or athletic director for the information.
To assist you in preparation for press releases and public comments about your teams who might be on the lists, we are providing the following background information about the awards. Please feel free to include this background information in your releases as needed. We will provide the aggregate public recognition information tomorrow in our release that you can feel free to include as well in your own releases.
BACKGROUND ON APR PUBLIC RECOGNITION AWARDS:
The NCAA is honoring Division I sports teams with public recognition awards for their latest multi-year Academic Progress Rate scores. These teams posted multi-year APR scores in the top 10 percent of all squads in their respective sports. The public recognition awards are part of the broad Division I academic reform effort. The APR provides a real-time look at a team’s academic success each semester by tracking the academic progress of each student-athlete. The APR includes eligibility, retention, and graduation in the calculation and provides a clear picture of the academic culture in each sport. High-performing teams receiving awards posted APR scores ranging from 965 to a perfect 1,000. Multi-year APR scores for all 6,110 Division I sports teams, including the teams receiving public recognition awards, will be announced May 6. The announcement also will include immediate and historical penalties for low-performing teams.
For more information or if you have questions, please feel free to contact me at
echristianson@ncaa.org or 317-917-6115.