LARAMIE, Wyo. (AP) - University of Wyoming athletic officials say they see no evidence of academic improprieties like what occurred at the University of North Carolina but they plan more steps to make sure doesn’t happen.
“The result of that report really sent a ripple through college athletics,” said Faculty Athletic Representative Alyson Hagy told UW trustees last week. “We have some good policies in place, but we are going to up our game.”
A recent inquiry found faculty and staff members at UNC were complicit in academic fraud over an extended period of time.
The report revealed that more than 3,100 athletes and everyday students took no-show classes, resulting in artificially high grades while faculty and university administrators either missed red flags or looked the other way. The report also said almost half the students enrolled in the bogus independent studies were athletes, more than 10 times their proportion in the overall student population. Athletics staffers steered players to the classes when they struggled to meet the grades required to continue competing.
“I’ve been auditing independent studies by student athletes for a number of years now and will continue to do that,” Hagy said. “This semester, we have two student-athletes in independent studies, a women’s golfer and women’s swimmer. These are very good students going high level work.”
Hagy said there are no indications of any pattern of fraud regarding independent studies, but she will continue to monitor each one. Additionally, Hagy said she also watches out for an abundance of student-athletes in any particular major, the Laramie Boomerang reported (https://bit.ly/1uNfgAO).
“I’ve been monitoring whether we see clustering in majors and we really don’t,” she said. “You will see there are some high-demand majors, but those are major that are popular among the general student population as well.”
UW Athletic Director Tom Burman said there are several things UW does well to combat academic dishonesty, but UW is not immune to the problem.
“This is a national problem,” Burman said. “We do a very good job of educating our student-athletes when they come through the door and we do a very good job of educating our coaches, administration and Office of Academic Support about the challenges in what is included in academic dishonesty.”
Burman said it is often difficult to prove academic dishonesty, but any evidence of such activity is counted as a first strike against the student-athlete in question. Coaches are then notified and that student must meet with Burman and their coach.
Hagy and Burman also told the trustees that nearly 90 percent of UW student athletes receive some sort of tutoring during their tenure at UW.
“The one thing Carolina wasn’t doing was recruiting athletes that could not be successful even with supplemental tutoring,” Hagy said. “We are not in that situation now.”
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Information from: Laramie Boomerang, https://www.laramieboomerang.com
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