Members in Attendance: Bryan Cook, Martha Crosby, SEC Liaison, Peter Nicholson, FAR, Stephen Olson, Julie Maeda, Co-Chair

Meeting focus: Identifying questions to ask Admissions representatives at next meeting. The committee is interested in learning how students are admitted to UHM as first year students and as transfers. Particularly, we’re interested in learning how athletes’ applications are processed and what considerations are made, if any.

An Admissions Review Committee has been formed to review appeals if an athlete is not admitted to UHM. Committee members are: P. Nicholson, Ron Cambra, and Harold Yokouchi. The referral is made by the Admissions Office or the coach of an athlete denied admission. The work of the committee is to review the application and to recommend admission given support and cooperation by the coach to help the student athlete succeed.

Per an email from P. Nicholson, Alan Yang and another individual should be the persons to invite from the Admissions office to educate us on the process. For our next meeting, Alan Yang and Harold Yokouchi will be invited and presented with the following questions beforehand.

Questions:

For first year (freshman) admissions:

1. What is the ‘floor’ for admissions?
   1. For athletes, are the NCAA standards for qualifying still used?
2. For applicants between the ‘floor’ and guaranteed admission, what criteria are used to determine acceptance of those individuals?
3. Are criteria that are used for admission weighted in any way? In other words, are specific application items (e.g., GPA) given more consideration than others (e.g., recommendations)?
4. For any predicting variables or criteria used to admit borderline applicants, are there follow-up procedures in place to evaluate success for those students?
5. Do any students receive special considerations in the admissions process?

For transfer students’ admissions:

1. Who in the Admissions Office handles admissions for transfer students?
2. How are applications evaluated?
3. Are there criteria or recommended standards that are required? What is the ‘floor’?
4. Are courses on transcripts weighted (e.g., 3 cr courses more than 1 cr) in any way and used in considering admission?
5. If applicants have earned an AA degree, does that guarantee admission?

Much of the challenge relative to student success and graduation has been with transfer students given the NCAA requirement of declaring a major after the fifth semester and their ill-preparedness prior to UHM. The WAC has the highest number of transfer student athletes and has the second lowest academic performance rate (APR) of Division I conferences.

Announcements:

B. Cook, our representative on the AAB is also sitting on the Faculty Relations with Athletics committee. They would like to develop and send out a survey to explore faculty involved with athletics. It’s still at the ‘thinking’ stage now, but B. Cook asked if the CoA would be willing to work with them on this survey, particularly in terms of its dissemination to faculty. If it comes from a committee directly affiliated with the faculty senate, more may respond.

The Gender Equity Committee, a standing committee under the AAB, is looking for new members. Anyone is welcomed to join. Their work is to review the Athletic department’s progress relative to meeting planned objectives for gender equity. If you or another faculty member on the committee or in your department is interested, please contact Bryan Cook (bgcook@hawaii.edu)

Respectfully submitted by: Julie Maeda