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Volume 72, Issue 105,
Monday, March 5, 2007
News Crossing the finish line Academic programs, dedicated staff
keep University ranked high
by CHRIS ELLIOTT
About a year ago, the bus carrying the UH men's basketball team pulled into a checkpoint at the Springfield/Branson Regional Airport in Springfield, Miss. The team's loss the night before had been a bitter one -- a single point separated UH from Missouri State at the end of the Second Round of the National Invitational Tournament. At the airport, Athletic Director Dave Maggard stood up, walked to the front of the bus and addressed an audience of disappointed athletes. Maggard assured them that they had nothing to be ashamed of and congratulated them on being the most successful UH basketball team in more than a decade. But to the students on the bus whose college basketball careers were over, the speech was more than just a pep talk. Maggard spent the next ten minutes emphasizing the importance of finishing school, personally challenging each player on the bus to continue to go to classes, study sessions and use all of the campus resources to earn his diploma, especially the seniors. Maggard's speech hit home. Though they've exhausted their playing eligibility, Ramon Dyer, Brian Latham, Chris Lawson and Sergio De Randemie, all of whom were seniors on that charter bus last March in Missouri, are still enrolled in UH, with plans of graduating. With its success in graduation rates among athletes and community service programs, UH recently made the National Consortium for Academics and Sports' Degree Completion and Service for the second consecutive year, and was honored in the NCAS Annual Conference in February. "Our goal is to improve and increase our graduation rates. We want our student athletes to remain in school, work towards graduation and graduate. We've had a very heavy emphasis on that," Maggard said. Associate Athletics Director of Student Athlete Services Maria Peden is the enforcer regarding Student Athletes and their grades, especially those who are no longer eligible to play. She does random pop-ins for attendance, makes sure that the students make their study sessions and puts together the reports of their grade-point averages. "We're here to help fifth-year and sixth-year seniors who have completed their athletic eligibility. Often those students are left outside the loop, because they're not in practice everyday," Peden said. "That's a really important group of student athletes to us. We still consider them our peers, our family." The 2005-06 reports Peden sent to NACS said that 15 of the 18 students who had completed their eligibility the previous year continued to go to school under UH scholarships and graduated. Maggard said the Athletics Department's outreach program also deserves recognition. Jaron Barganier, a former UH football player, is the Athletics Outreach Coordinator. Barganier heads UH outreach programs such as Little Coogs and All-N-One. In his three years in charge, the programs have built relationships with 72 area schools and have come into contact with approximately 23,900 students and adults through various speeches, autograph signings and projects. "Community Outreach has always been a big part of the university, but the way that we've been doing (it) has been a little different," Barganier said. "Instead of only donating funds to different projects, we're also physically trying to make a difference by putting ourselves out there and doing manual labor and interacting with people." UH defensive tackle Marquay Love has participated in the All-N-One program for four years, and said the more than 200 hours he's put in have been personally gratifying for him. "You have kids that don't have anyone to tell them
what the right things and the wrong things are in life," Love said. "Toward
the end of the program they look up to you. You see a difference. You sit
down and talk to them about things that have been going on in their life,
because some of them have had a lot of trouble in their life. … After it's
over, you see a lot of change."
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