The Center for Athletic Academic Services has recently announced that they have had “unprecedented success” in helping student-athletes achieve great scores in the classroom. Fall 2015 had some very impressive academic statistics, a few of them include being the 10^th consecutive semester with students’ departmental GPA at 3.0 or above, with 15 out of 17 teams having a collective team GPA of 3.0 or above, and 41% of freshman athletes having a GPA of 3.5 or above. Especially impressive is the Women’s Soccer team, which had a 3.74 team GPA and the Men’s Tennis team, which had a 3.5 team GPA.

Women’s Soccer Team

Tom Bowen, the Director of Athletics, says that “it is a culture that we have created here in Athletics, and the standards of excellence are our minimum standards for all that we do every single day.” He wants all of the University’s student-athletes “to become a true culture of champions, where every single student-athlete knows our standards and our expectations. They all have a shared focus, and are student-athlete community driven to be the best. Our goals are still not fully attained, and this fall academic success is just one aspect of our overall commitment for the 2015-2016 athletic year.”

A major contributor to the success of student-athletes at UM is the Center for Athletic Academic Services program. Through CAAS, student-athletes have access to comprehensive academic support services, including, but not limited to: intrusive advising, academic monitoring, academic mentoring, tutoring, structured study hall, and personal and professional development services through the PAWS program (Preparing Athletes for Winning Success). In addition, there is very close collaboration between the CAAS staff and athletic coaches, which strengthens the impact of CAAS’s services for the student-athletes. Coaches at UM also take great pride in recruiting the “right” type of student-athletes. By creating a culture of excellence in all areas, these young men and women, who not only want to compete at the highest level to win championships for our institution, but also want to prepare for life after sport.

Interestingly, there is a strong connection between better academics and better performance in sports. Bob Baker, Director of CAAS, says, “one example that represents that connection is the football program which has recently been winning on the field and in the classroom. The team had its highest team GPA in institutional history in spring 2015, and had 23 out of 23 student-athletes earn their degree during the 2014-15 year; that’s a 100% graduation rate for the year–a year in which they also won their first conference championship in a very long time.”

Men’s Tennis Team

Part of CAAS’s success lies in its customized programming for each student. Some student-athletes have daily study hall and academic support appointments, while others have appointments twice per week or weekly appointments. CAAS also reaches out to faculty via the Retain program, electronically requesting progress reports twice each semester, and then works with coaches to ensure students are on the right track academically. Baker praises the coaches, “They do an amazing job at supporting the CAAS staff’s efforts to help their student-athletes.”

CAAS’s work is important in changing how athletics and academics are understood at the University level. Baker says that he and the CAAS staff “take pride in helping all student-athletes one way or another, consistently challenging all of our student-athletes to grow socially, academically and pre-professionally while they are here at the University of Memphis.”

One of the University of Memphis’s own participated in the Sundance Film Festival this year in Utah. Kevin Brooks is studying communication with an emphasis in film and TV production. Brooks describes how he became interested in filmmaking: “I was drawn to film at an early age because I watched the film The Matrix and it really caught my attention because it showed me how emotional and visual a movie can really be. Coincidentally that same year, my dad brought home a video camera and he taught me how to use it and from then on my interest in filmmaking just really took off.”

Brooks received a fellowship from the Sundance Film Festival through the Ignite Fellows Program. This program flew Brooks to the five-day festival this month, where he attended screenings and had exclusive access to experienced filmmakers discussing their creative processes. It is the beginning of a yearlong mentorship in which each fellow is assigned a Sundance alum to provide feedback on the fellow’s scripts and productions and guidance on their careers. A press release from Sundance says: “The Ignite Fellows Program is a competitive and intensive Sundance Institute experience designed to provide meaningful opportunities for engagement, mentorship and industry exposure for emerging filmmakers 18 to 24 years of age.”

Historically, Sundance has always been part of granting young filmmakers the chance to create their vision and get it shown to a wide audience. They chose the age range of 18-24 years old because so many classic films that came out of the Sundance program were created by people within that age range, such as Kevin Smith with Clerks and Robert Rodriguez with El Mariachi to name a few. They chose the finalists by hosting a short film competition online with the theme “What’s Next.” The film had to be between 1-8 min long and they were looking for films that were innovative, bold, and stylistically adventurous.

Brooks says that he was “drawn to film because it is such a powerful tool that can be used to better our culture and to better our way of thinking. It is a way to bring millions of people together and have them experience different emotions and reactions to the work of art that is placed on screen, and I just felt as an aspiring filmmaker, my responsibility is to create films that will better people and cause them to think in ways that will push forward our society.” Brooks’s goals for his films resonate with the University and Memphis community, so it is not surprising that he was drawn to the University of Memphis: “I felt their program was a great platform for me learn great things in my studies and they are super helpful with their students on the steps they should take after graduating from college. I learned a lot from my recent Documentary Writing class with Professor Leake, I never really considered making documentaries but after taking this class my view on documentary changed and honestly the lessons I learned in there I can also apply to film. I just really loved the honesty that has to go into documentaries and even though narrative film is fictional, I still want them to feel honest.”

This fellowship will help Brooks pursue his goals and meet many people who are already established within the industry. He is particularly excited about having a mentor: “I think that by having a mentor, I will learn many things that I didn’t know before and he will help on advising me with upcoming projects that I want to work on and getting those films shown in festivals around the world.”