Record-Setting GPA Posted for Georgia Southern Football
7/2/2012 12:00:00 PM | Football
STATESBORO, Ga. - The Georgia Southern Football team made a statement about winning off the field by posting its highest-ever spring semester and academic year grade point averages. Winning on the field, with back-to-back appearances in the NCAA FCS semifinals, the Eagles now have back-to-back record GPAs for the last two academic years and record-high GPAs for both the fall and spring semesters.
For the 2011-12 academic year, the Eagle Football team posted its highest-ever GPA with a 2.64, topping the mark set last year. The full-year team GPA for 2011-12 was .11 higher than the record set in 2010-11 (team GPA of 2.53). The Georgia Southern Football program-record 2.70 semester GPA for spring 2012 followed the best-ever fall semester GPA of 2.58 registered in 2011.
Not only did the team improve the full-year and single-semester GPAs, the number of student-athletes earning spots on the President's and Dean's Lists also increased. For spring 2012, a record-number 49 Eagles posted GPAs of 3.0 or above with seven players named to the President's List for their 4.0 GPAs and 11 to the Dean's List with a GPA of 3.5 or above.
"Our expectation is to have a football program that produces results that are representative of a team that is committed to excellence and strives to perform at a championship level in all we do," said Eagle Head Football Coach Jeff Monken. "Our academic successes continue to be a great source of pride for the Eagle football program and for the university. We challenged our team to improve on their great academic marks from last year's record-setting year in the classroom and they answered the call. Our student-athlete services department - Keith Roughton, Matt Lombardi, Daryl Evans, Chris Booker and Jess Callihan -- provides integral support for our team and we appreciate their dedication and encouragement."
The Georgia Southern Football program's commitment to excellence is reflected in other key numbers tied to academic success as the Eagles earned the program's best single-year NCAA Academic Progress Rate (APR) of 953 for the 2010-11 reporting period. APR was instituted by the NCAA as a means for providing intercollegiate athletics programs with a snapshot of a team's academic success and progress of individual student-athletes, accounting for eligibility, retention and graduation. Achieving the ultimate goal, 21 Football seniors will have earned their degrees in 2011-2012.
Georgia Southern student-athletes must be enrolled full-time with a minimum of 12 credit hours during the course of a semester as a requirement of their participation in NCAA competition. The GPAs comparisons are based on semester grades since Georgia Southern converted from the quarter system following the 1997-98 academic year.
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