INDIANAPOLIS – Five Great Lakes Valley Conference (GLVC) member institutions have earned the NCAA Division II Presidents' Award for Academic Excellence, awarded to Division II schools that have achieved an Academic Success Rate of 90% or higher. This year, 43 member D-II schools earned this honor.
The GLVC was second among its 22 other conference counterparts with five schools, while the Northeast-10 Conference led the division with eight athletics programs achieving scores of 90% or more.
Rockhurst, which is one of 10 schools that have earned the award every year in the 11-year history of it being given, was the highest rated league school at 95%, while Maryville followed with a rate of 94%. Truman State (92%) was next, ahead of both Lewis and William Jewell that each recorded a 91% ate.
Bentley and Saint Michael's were the top performers, earning an ASR of 99%. Biola, Hillsdale, and Thomas Jefferson University rounded out the top five with 98%.
The Division II ASR includes transfers into a school in the calculation and removes transfers out who left school while academically eligible. The ASR also includes the more than 31,000 nonscholarship student-athletes who were enrolled in the four years covered in the most recent data.
Even when using the less-inclusive federal graduation rates, student-athletes are outperforming their peers in the general student population by 8%. For Division II athletes, the federal rate increased 1 percentage point to 60%, and the general student body increased 1 point to 52%.
The other nine schools that have earned the award for 11 consecutive years include Assumption, Bentley, Eckerd, Hillsdale, Rollins, Saint Michael's, Seattle Pacific, Stonehill and University of the Sciences.