Campuses love to celebrate sporting achievements, and they frequently feature varsity athletes in institutional publicity. Many campuses also rely upon athletes for enrollment. But many student-athletes live in a silo—focused on athletics, segregated from nonathletic peers, and less interested in questions about life after college. This is not good for student-athletes, and it is not good for their campuses. The Purposeful Student-Athlete project is visiting eight to ten NetVUE campuses that take a different approach to student-athletes. These campuses prioritize athletes as whole persons with vital questions of purpose to explore and answer. Doing this important work requires intentionality, campus-wide commitment, and ownership by coaches and athletic staff. During this workshop, the leaders of the Purposeful Student-Athlete project will report preliminary findings from this study, share working models, and invite participants to reflect on the benefits and barriers to student-athlete vocational exploration on their campus.
Tim Clydesdale, Professor of Sociology, The College of New Jersey
Michael B. Mitchell, Associate Professor in the Departments of African American Studies and of Criminology, The College of New Jersey
Angela R. (Angie) Morenz, Professor of Physical Education and Sport Management, Blackburn College (IL)