New Director Named for Support Program for Athletes
Posted on April 17, 2013Michelle Brown, a former varsity volleyball player with more than 15 years’ experience working in academic support for college athletes, will start work May 6 as director of the University’s Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes.
Brown has been director of the Student-Athlete Center for Academic Excellence and associate athletic director for academics and student services since 2005 at Florida Atlantic University, where she implemented a data-driven approach in encouraging the academic and personal well-being of athletes.
Robert Mercer, who had held the position for about 10 years, was moved to a job outside of athletics advising in August 2012 in the wake of a scandal that involved irregularities in tutoring football players and a faculty report that pointed to evidence that athletes had been directed toward classes that were found to be academically fraudulent. Harold Woodard ’78, an associate dean and director of student success-academic counseling who earned a master’s degree from UNC in 1981, served in the interim.
Chancellor Holden Thorp ’86 has said the ASPSA needed a fresh perspective.
Under Brown, the program will move from the College of Arts and Sciences, where it has been housed since the early 1980s, to the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost. Brown will report directly to the provost.
“This change reflects the important role that ASPSA plays in advancing the academic mission of the entire University, as well as the recommended growth in the program resulting from a strategic planning process completed in 2011,” a UNC statement said. Brown will convene the Provost’s Roundtable, a working group that will bring together colleagues from across the University who are responsible for fostering the academic success of athletes.
“The shift in reporting responsibility definitively addresses the proper separation of academic and athletic responsibilities for student-athletes because the provost is ultimately responsible for academic oversight across the entire campus,” the statement said.
Brown will lead an ASPSA staff that includes four associate directors, a learning specialist, a reading, writing and learning specialist, five academic counselors and a tutor coordinator. They are joined by six part-time learning assistants (graduate students, an undergraduate alumnus, a local schoolteacher and a professional tutor) and 57 part-time tutors (graduate students, local schoolteachers and retired faculty).
Brown received her bachelor’s degree in international studies and French in 1992 at West Virginia University, where she played Division I volleyball on scholarship and received all-conference honors. Between her sophomore and junior years, she earned a certificate in French at the Universiti de Paris, Sorbonne. While pursuing her master’s in French/teachers of English to speakers of other languages, she received a second certificate in French from the Universiti du Quebec a Chicoutimi. She completed her doctorate in higher education administration at Florida Atlantic in 2002.
More online…
- Role of Carolina Athletics Subject of April 19 Panel
April 2013 news report - Thorp Says Martin Has Freedom to Decide What Needs to be Done
August 2012 news report - UNC Plans Wide-Ranging Review of Academics-Athletics Relationship
August 2012 news report - Faculty Committee: Should UNC Athletes Be Academically Separate?
July 2012 news report - The UNC’s Faculty Executive Committee report
- Only Football Players Took Hastily Arranged Summer Class, Taught in Absentia
June 2012 news report - SBI Probing Fraud Report in African, Afro-American Studies
May 2012 news report - Evidence of Academic Fraud Found in African and Afro-American Studies
May 2012 news report - Practices in African, Afro-American Studies Draw Scrutiny
September 2011 news report - Department Chair Linked to Football Probe Resigns
September 2011 news report
