Athletic graduation rates improve dramatically

Fresno State 's Athletics Department continues to make great strides in academic success. Among those is an 11 percent increase in the overall department's graduation rate according to information released by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).

The NCAA released the graduation rates for all institutions in October and Fresno State's athletics department graduation rate for the 1997-98 freshman class was 45 percent, an increase over the 1996-97 freshmen class, which was 34 percent.

Fresno State's four-year average increased by one percentage point to 42 percent, counting back to freshmen student-athletes that enrolled at Fresno State in the fall of 1993. The rates are based solely on freshmen who receive athletic scholarships. Transfers and walk-ons do not count toward overall graduation rates.

The most notable increase came in the sport of football, which improved 17 percentage points from 33 percent to 50 percent. The 1997-98 class was Pat Hill's first recruiting class. That percentage is slightly lower than the national average for Division I football, which was 55 percent. Fresno State's football graduation rate ranks fifth overall in the WAC, third-best among public institutions.

Fresno State's football improvement is lauded considering Hill took over the program with the graduation rate of 25 percent, lowest in the nation.

"We have come a long way," said Athletics Director Scott Johnson. "And we have more work to do, but there are some great signs that we are on the right track. With the opening of the new Ricchiuti Academic Center, we expect to increase the academic performance of our current student-athletes and use that facility as a recruiting tool to entice better students to attend Fresno State."

Only six individual sports were tracked by the NCAA for this report, football, baseball, men's basketball, women's basketball, men's and women's cross country and track and field. All other sports were ranked in two categories by gender

The men's track & field program had a 100 percent graduation rate. The Bulldog basketball team did not receive a graduation rate ranking because no scholarship freshmen enrolled in the fall of 1997.

Other recent academic achievements in athletics include:

• A 2.91 cumulative GPA for the athletics department, the highest in eight years.
•  Nearly 270 Bulldog Student-Athletes (54 percent of all student-athletes) were honored in the 2004 Torch of Excellence Dinner in April for producing a GPA of 3.0 or better for the spring and fall of 2003.
• Fresno State 's 63 Academic All-WAC selections in 2003-04 ranked third amongst all of the WAC schools.
• More than 20 Bulldog freshmen earned WAC All-Academic honors, second-most in the WAC.
• Fresno State 's baseball and women's tennis teams led their respective sports in Academic All-WAC honorees, while football, men's track and field and the women's track and field teams ranked second among their WAC peers.
• The Bulldog football team posted an all-time high of a 2.87 GPA last year, with nearly half the team (49 of 103) achieving a 3.0 GPA.
• Fresno State has produced 57 Academic All-WAC football players since Hill arrived, second-most in the WAC in that time.
• Fresno State Athletics discontinued the recruitment and admission of academic non-qualifiers beginning in the fall of 2003.
• The new Ricchiuti Academic Center will be completed in November, which will include new offices for academic support personnel, tutoring and teaching labs and a large computer lab for all student-athletes.

"While our graduation rates are not where we want them, I firmly believe in what we are doing," Johnson added. "Unfortunately, graduation rates don't change overnight and these are from the freshman class six-year ago, so it's not a true reflection of what has happen since then but it's what are judged by.

“It'll take a few years for the continuing education of the student-athletes, academic procedural changes and hard work to become realized. The work we are doing with our current student-athlete, and the goals we have set for the future won't be acknowledged until graduation rates are calculated and reported in four, five or six years from now. I believe at that time, we will be the lead Dog in the WAC both academically and athletically," Johnson said.