Chapter 5: Helping Student-Athletes Adapt to College: The Role of an Academic Transition Course

The challenges freshman student-athletes face as they enter and. adjust to a university culture and. academic experience are richly outlined, in scholarly literature. Several researchers (Hyatt. 2003; Keim & Strickland, 2004) have detailed, the time demands, fatigue, personal identity, and. interpersonal conflicts inherent in the athlete’s freshman year. The majority of these published, studies include “implications for practice’’ intended, to suggest institutional means of helping alleviate the adjustment burden freshman athletes bear. This chapter is written from the perspective of one educator’s opportunity (JRS) to listen to student-athletes describe their turbulent first-year experiences in their own words. Since 1995 I have spent each fall semester teaching a life skills, transition to college class for freshman male athletes at a large Division I southeastern university. It is from the perspective of the podium in that classroom that I offer this chapter; the story of the history and curriculum of a course that hopefully represents the accumulated, expression of my students ’ themes of academic adjustment.