By Andrea Keppler
In her 10th year as Seton Hall’s Faculty Athletics Representative in academic support services, Dr. Laura Schoppmann heads a department of five members who assist student-athletes with academic advising, scheduling and pacing with overall academic performance. Schoppmann is a professor in the mathematics and computer science department at the Hall, but has connected with her passion for sports in this role with Athletics.
While working with the student-athlete body, Schoppmann explains how Seton Hall and the NCAA have been working towards maintain high performance off the court and in the classroom through prioritizing academics as much as the next game on a student-athlete’s schedule.
Andrea Keppler: How have you gotten involved with the Athletics department here on campus in your role in academic support services?
Laura Schoppmann: Every institution has to have what’s called the faculty athletics representative. The NCAA’s constitution or bylaws say that every institution no matter what Division, I, II or III, we all have to have them. The previous gentleman, George Brown, who’s a professor in the history department, was retiring at the university [and] had approached me [about his position of faculty athletics representative]. We had been friends and talked a lot about soccer in particular because he was a soccer ref and my children played soccer so I would see him.
He approached me if I would be interested in doing it, and I had already had a preexisting relationship with Matt Geibel and Amanda DiDonato just as a faculty person because they run academic support for student-athletes, so I’d interact with them when I’d have student-athletes in my class. So I said, yeah. Sports are really big in my family and for me personally and supporting the academic side of the student-athletes is a very valuable job so that’s how it came about.
AK: Through your work with Athletics, how many students do you advise on a semester basis, or how is that facilitated?
LS: I don’t actually advise the students myself. My role is more oversight in terms of Matt, Amanda … we have a new person Carissa [Leoni], [and] they are the academic advisers. Each student-athlete has to be certified for competition. The NCAA has all these rules about passing so many credits, progress towards degree, when you have to pick a major, things like that. So I oversee that [and]…each semester we check to see if every student-athlete is achieving those benchmarks.
I also interact within a lot of other things within academic support: helping create policies, looking at competition schedules, looking at academic award nominations, if there’s ever any issues between student-athletes and faculty, missed class time, more broader academic support issues than the day-to-day advising.
AK: I’ve had student-athletes in my classes in previous semesters and faculty and professors seem to be every lenient in terms of allowing them to take off for competition and games. Have you ever seen any issues where maybe that wasn’t the case, where there was a larger conflict between the Athletics and academic departments?
LS: I have to say no. I also am very involved with what we call FARs, faculty athletic reps, within our conference as well as we have a national organization of faculty athletic representatives across the country, across all the divisions, and a lot of other institutions have an institutional missed class policy that not only cover student-athletes, but everybody. If you’re on the debate team or you representing the university, there’s a policy. We at Seton Hall don’t have that, each faculty member at Seton Hall can make up their own attendance or missed class policy.
They’re very accommodating in terms of allowing students to make up the work. We have had times when our academic support staff goes with a team. Particularly, take softball for example, their Big East Championship tournament is around final exams or maybe right before. So often times academic support staff go with the team to supervise study hall, and we’ve had faculty permit proctoring on the road and things like that. So as long as we communicate with the faculty what’s happening.
AK: Two seasons ago there was an incident where a basketball player was missing the bench mark in terms of [academic] requirements and ultimately Kevin Willard had to [dismiss] him from the team. Is there ever a point during the semester where there are checkpoints with the athletes just to make sure that they’re maintaining the good grades the class and still balancing that student-athlete life?
LS: Absolutely, every team for their academic advisors that being Matt, Amanda, Carissa, give their coaches mid-year reports and they give them right-before-final-exam reports. And depending on the advisors, the way they want to do things, there are always those standing reports like the situation you described where something starts percolate in terms of a student, red flags pop up.
Academics are in constant contact with their coaches and I do have to say the coaches we have on staff now, academics is high, high, high on their priority list in terms of the type of student they recruit, as well as when they’re here, being aware of how they’re progressing. I mean, our student-athlete cumulative overall GPA is over a 3.4 and that’s all 14 teams. And that’s phenomenal in terms of being able to achieve that it’s a testament to the kids, to the students as well as academic support and well as the coaches.
AK: What advice would you give to a perspective athlete whether it’s at a D-I, D-II, D-III level and how they can balance their work in class with their practices and games?
LS: Organization. The NCAA has instituted—I think this is the second year of bylaws and rules regarding time management in terms of required days off from competition and practice—certain times off after your season ends you can’t have any activities for a certain amount of time. The NCAA as a whole has become very conscious of the time demands so they’re trying to force these rules so that students know, ok my practice is this.
Coaches have to give the students a schedule of when their time is required whether it be for lifting, or film or actual practice or competitions so I think for a the student-athlete from me, the key would be time management. Being organized and being able to focus at the task at hand. When you’re in study hall, you’re in study hall. You have that hour or two hours to do your studying, academics. Focus on that in the moment. Try not to focus on practices later or practice today or anything else. Try to maximize the time with the task at hand.
Andrea Keppler can be reached at andrea.keppler@student.shu.edu or on Twitter @keppler_andrea.