The purpose of this study was to understand how athletic professionals and faculty can work together to create a literacy program to support incoming football freshman student-athletes and the multiple literacies in which they participate in on a daily basis, in college setting. Often student-athletes are negatively stereotyped by their peers and professors as lacking the “student” aspect of student-athlete (Cutler, 2009), and chronically underperform in the classroom and struggle with academic inequities throughout their college years (Beamon & Bell, 2006; Benson, 2000; Umbach, Palmer, Kuh, & Hannah, 2006). These stereotypes and statistics need to be addressed and one way to do that is to create a working and collaborative relationship between professors and athletic personnel.
This qualitative study addresses two questions: (1) How does research and theory become practical in a literacy program with the input of a learning specialist? (2) What are the main tenants of collaboration between faculty and athletics when designing a literacy program?
This presentation will give the results of the study; tips of how to work across the college setting; and offer practical advice of how to foster collaboration when creating a summer program for student-athletes.
