THIBODAUX, La. — The NCAA will give Nicholls State University $100,000 to augment student-athlete academic advancement as part of its Accelerating Academic Success Program.
As part of the award, the school will match $20,000, which brings the total to $120,000. The money will go toward establishing a Student-Athletic Academic Center in the Ellender Memorial Library. The space will give student-athletes a dedicated area for tutoring and study hours. Funding will also be used to hire additional academic personnel.
“I am thrilled for our student-athletes and our entire department. The Student-Athlete Academic Center has been in the works for a long time,” said Jonathan Terrell, athletic director. “This space is centrally located and will become a hub for student-athletes as they continue their journey as Colonels.”
Established in 2012 by the NCAA Board of Governors, the Accelerating Academic Success Program seeks to support initiatives and develop programs to enhance the academic achievements of student-athletes. Schools eligible for grants must be non-football schools or in the Football Championship Subdivision, operate in the bottom 15 percent of resources and have less than two teams with an Academic Progress Rate (APR) of 930 or lower. The APR, created to provide more of a real-time measurement of academic success than graduation rates offer, is a team-based metric in which scholarship student-athletes earn 1 point each term for remaining eligible and 1 point for staying in school or graduating.
Nicholls Athletics posted its highest APR in the 2019-2020 academic year with a 985 score, as well as its highest collective GPA with a 3.31. Ten of the 14 sports registered a perfect 1000 APR score. Additionally, 156 student-athletes are on the Southland Conference Commissioner’s Honor Roll.
“We manage with the resources we have,” Terrell said. “We are grateful we received the grant because we do more with less, and we look forward to continuing our climb in academics with a bit more resources.”
For more information, visit GeauxColonels.com.
