Rice University Student Athletes’ ACADEMIC HIGHLIGHTS

National

• For the entering 1995 class, student athletes graduated at a 91% rate and the student body as a whole graduated at an 89% rate.  For this achievement, Rice received the USA Today/ NCAA 2002 Academic Achievement Award presented for the highest overall student athlete graduation rate in Division I-A.
  
  
• The graduation rate of those who have exhausted their athletic eligibility for the 10 years of entering classes from 1986 to 1995 was 98%, good enough for Rice to rank first in the Western Athletic Conference and fourth among NCAA Division I-A institutions.
  
  
• For the 1992 through 1995 entering classes, Rice student athletes graduated at an 84% flat rate (fifth among NCAA Division I-A Schools.)  During that same time the football team graduated at an 83% flat rate (third among NCAA Division I-A schools behind Duke and Northwestern)… both of these rates ranked 1^st in the Western Athletic Conference.
  
  
• The Rice football team has been honored for its graduation rate by the American Football Coaches Association fifteen years in a row, the fourth longest streak in the nation.
  
  
• Rice is number-one in the nation in Golf All-American Scholar Athletes with 20 scholar athletes between 1985 and 2002. 
  
  
• Both Adam Davis and Allison Beckford from our track and field teams have been named Academic All-America, second team for 2001-2002.
  
  
• In the summer of 2002, six women’s volleyball players were working abroad: Rebekah Neal, Rebecca Kainz, Allison Donohue and Briana Cook in London, England; Catherine DuPont in Argentina, and  Rebeca Pazo in Spain.
  
  
• In the fall of 2002, seven student athletes studied abroad: Leigh Leman (volleyball - Mexico), Courtney Smith (volleyball - Italy), Alison Broadfoot (volleyball - Australia), Fabien Giraud (men’s tennis - Australia), Sarah Bracken (women’s basketball – Australia), LaToya Brown  (women’s basketball - Australia), and Kylie Wallis (women’s tennis – Italy).

Regional/Conference

• For the 2001-2002 school year, Leigh Leman (volleyball), Billy Harvin (football), Joe Bob Thompson (football – 2^nd team), Matt Webber (football), Omar Mance (men’s basketball), A. Hunter Brown (baseball), Steven Herce (baseball), A. J. Porfirio (baseball), Erin Brand (track & field/cross country) and Natalie Briaud (women’s tennis) were named Verizon / CoSIDA Academic All-District VI.
  
  
• For the 2002-2003 school year to date, Michael Merrick (football) and Catherine DuPont (volleyball) have been named Verizon/ CoSIDA Academic All-District VI, first team.   Rebeca Pazo (volleyball), Vince Hawkins (football) and Sarah Yoder (soccer) have been named Verizon/ CoSIDA Academic All-District VI, second team.
  
  
• From fall 1997 to spring 2002, Rice has had 571 students recognized as Western Athletic Conference Scholar-Athletes.  For this award, student athletes must complete the school year with a 3.2 GPA.  There were 151 such students for the 2001-2002 school year.  This represented 49% of all student athletes.
  
  
• In 2001-2002, 95 Rice students were named to the Western Athletic Conference academic all-conference team, having competed in 50% of the athletic contests and maintained a 3.2 cumulative GPA.  This represented 31% of all student athletes.

Rice University

• For the 1992 through 1995 entering classes, Rice student athletes graduated at an 84% flat rate.  This is the highest 4-class graduation rate in school history.
  
  
• Judith Hagedorn and Rafael Reyes were the Dr. Hubert E. Bray Scholar Athletes of the Year for both 2001 and 2002.
  
  
• For the fall of 2001, twelve out of the fourteen Rice varsity teams had better than 3.00 team semester GPA’s with the semester average for all student athletes being 3.08. 

Updated January 23, 2003