Athletics undergoes certification process

This year, Tech is one of 34 schools going through the NCAA Certification process. The purpose of the certification process is to ensure that the NCAA's member institutions can demonstrate that they are dedicated to academics and integrity in athletics.

"The spirit of the process is to help improve the quality of the operations being evaluated," said Jack Lohmann, vice provost for Institutional Development.

The process began in February of this year when the NCAA sent a notice to Tech saying that the program was up for inspection. The process occurs at all institutions on a 10 year interval. The three main components of the process are academic integrity, a review of Tech's processes and policies and student-athlete equity.

In April, Institute President Wayne Clough asked Lohmann to act as chairman for the Steering Committee, which is made up of about 20 to 25 people. On Sept. 8th, all of the committees met to get organized and get started on creating a self-study report.

From now until May 1, 2007, the school will work on sending out a report to the NCAA on the findings of the self-study based on the three main components of the process.

By the end of the summer, the NCAA will give Tech back feedback on the report. Around September or October of next year, the NCAA will have their official visit to campus to certify the findings of the report.

In February 2008, the NCAA will send out their final decision about Tech's certification status.

"The biggest part of the workload in the whole activity is the preparation of the self-study, but even that is a fairly straightforward process of Tech putting it in writing and demonstrating that it has documentation to support to the NCAA that Tech has the proper operating procedures and policies," Lohmann said.

Within the self-study, the major aspects are progression towards degree, graduation rate, effectiveness of student advisement, eligibility rules, and admissions. The study will focus on how student-athletes are making satisfactory progress towards meaningful degrees, making sure that those students are meeting their eligibility requirements and ensuring that admissions standards are equal for student-athletes in relation to all other Tech students.

This process is not related to the athletic program being put on probation a couple years ago. In 2003, Tech was placed on probation when 10 Tech football players were thrown off the team for academic infractions, including players not making progress toward their degree and eligibility infractions regarding student GPA. Lohmann said the probation should not have a large effect on the current certification.

"That incident should factor very little into this certification process.There are two reasons for this. One of them is that we responded to all of those issues already, and we have put in to place new procedures, processes and people to ensure that we are doing a better job of monitoring student performance to their degrees. We have reported all of that to the NCAA, and they are satisfied," Lohmann said.